Re: Thoughs after discussions at OSCON

On 8/9/05, Rick Morris <rick(at)brainscraps(dot)com> wrote:
> on the concepts to know this. While http://techdocs.postgresql.org is a
> great resource, it is (of course) focused more on many different
> technical aspects of PostgreSQL, rather than teaching the overall
[...]

I've been using PostgreSQL for a while now, and this is the place and
the moment when I learned about techdocs.postgresql.org
Indeed it is a great a resource. The only problem with it is that I didn't
know about its existence until now. Probably I wasn't paying attention ;)
but then again -- I think it should be more advertised/linked to.

As far as providing documents about more generic concepts -- I think
it is a great idea from web visibility point of view.

I remember a while back when I was co-developing application which
also used MySQL, I used PostgreSQL's documentation to learn SQL.
It was later when I learned PostgreSQL, but I think it was important
that my first contact with SQL was through PostgreSQL (even though
I used it on MySQL back then ;)). These things "stay" and later when
I was looking for something SQLish I looked it up in PostgreSQL's
docs. And then I was englihtened and started using PostgreSQL. :)

I think good documentation, especially basic one is important -- people
will return to it, like I did. And at some point they might want to try the
real thing. :)

As far as convincing people that using relational model is better and
that they should switch over -- its hard and sometimes close to
impossible. Imagine some huge amount of logs in one table and telling
people that given proper tools (good relational database) you could
reduce dataset size (normalisation!), automatically pratition the data
(inheritance, future table partitioning), while maintaining access to
old format of data (views) and giving quicker access to some summaries
(materialised views). What will be the result?
Normalisation? You mean like instead of one table five tables?
No no no, the data will be surely corrupted. And accessing it
will be slow and you'll have to write joins like this:
select * from tab_a f,tab_b g,tab_c h,tab_d i,tab_e j where
f.id=g.someid and ...
and besides it will take ages to deploy.

Seriousley, I think the best approach to advertise PostgreSQL is through
third-party applications. Like SpamAssassin. If PostgreSQL can prove
that it will compete easily with any other RDBMS people will have more
faith in it. "It is doable, they could do it with SpamAssassin, we can do
it with our system, its worth to try!". A good documentation for such cases
would be also very valuable. Like "Designing PostgreSQL schema for
SpamAssassin" where would be written why some things are created
this and that way, so people could learn about PostgreSQLs features
and drawbacks (its good to know them from the start!) simply by reading
some other projects docs.

Regards and good night,
Dawid