The Open Source Zone

This book took me from being a SQL novice (let alone a PostgreSQL novice) to being able to being able to use PostgreSQL for business apps.<p>I'm not quite sure why some reviewers knocked it. It has much more content than the FAQ, good examples and a reference section. <p>One reviewer knocked the reference section, claiming the book was half full of appendices... in fact the reference section is what you most often go to the book for after you've worked through the basic concepts in the first section.<p>I think the layout is slightly odd - the examples of commands and their results are grouped together in sections that are usually a page or two ahead of the text that explains them. So you spend a bit of time flicking pages to see examples. But once you get the hang of this style it's not exactly the biggest pain in the world.<p>I think it's a very good book, one that took me from being a SQL beginner yet is still useful as a day to day reference.<p>Lee

This book certainly covers all the basics for those wishing to learn PostgreSQL - However:<p>1. Nearly half of the book is Appendices. Maybe OK if you don't want to read the free docs on the computer screen. <p>2. Written like an encyclopedia. Ever try reading one of those? The lack of user exercises is particularly irritating. <p>...<p>Get the Wrox book instead of this one and you will be richer and happier ...

The book is 453 pages of which 220 are simply manual pages in print. Of the other 233 pages about 105 of them are basic SQL syntax review. So now you have 128 pages left. Many of those are information about databases in general, such as what are indexes and why are they used. The amount of pure PostgreSQL specific information is very limited. The book is in no way worth.... You are basically paying for manual pages. Save your money and download the documentation for PostgreSQL which is very well written. This book is very well written and easy to follow. There is nothing techincally wrong with the book. Frequently, however, you will see the statement "See the manual pages for more information". Save yourself the money and see the manual pages.

First of all, this is not a book about Postgresql database, it's a book about introduction to SQL!<p>Considering the title, it should at least give some direction about how to install/configure, list the gotcha's, do's, don't's, etc. But this book starts with the assumption that you already have the database installed and ready to run, server and all. <p>I'm not kidding, it's actually listed in one of the first sections in the book that a running server is required to read this book. How does this match the "Introduction and Concepts" title???<p>A little pointer to the author if he's reading this, in his next book or second edition of this book, he should: 1. Explain where PostgreSQL fits in modern distributed architectures 2. Why would I want to use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL if I'm developing a J2EE application, how about CORBA? 3. How do I take advantage of the OO features of PostgreSQL to shorten the development time

We are involved in CF, vb and php projects and needed an alternative to another Oracle license. We turned to PostgreSQL and soon discovered we were making heavy going of the online docs. This book has quickly answered our functional questions, helping us with transactions, sequences etc. So far everything we've needed we've found right away.<p>I wish they were more specific about field max sizes - oracle for example is very clera and very constrained (4k limits on inmserts to varchar fields for example). These limits appear to be arbritarily large as we have tested without overrunning them.<p>ALso we have of course the source files for postgres, so questions like that can be answered with some familiarity with the code. Postgres isn't Oracle and it certainly wont scale like Oracle, but for web projects witha few thousand records and a few dozen simultaneous users it, and this book, are perfect.