Postgres SQL

[slanning at buphy.bu.edu (Scott Lanning)]

On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Ron Peterson wrote:
>Randall Hofland wrote:
>> PostgreSQL:  Introduction and Concepts
>>
>> by Bruce Momjian
>
>This has been available in pdf format from the PostgreSQL web site for
>some time.  If it hasn't already, it will be removed shortly by request
>of the publisher.  To encourage people to buy the book, obviously.  The
>content is available in html at:
>
>http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html.
>
>As to it's usefulness, I guess that depends on what you already know and
>your objectives.  I think the title is pretty descriptive - it's a good
>introduction to PostgreSQL.  If you're interested in more advanced
>topics like how to program triggers in C, you'll need to consult other
>reference documentation.
>
>Bruce's writing is clear, and the book's organization is quite
>sensible.  The book itself benefits from the open source process, as
>it's been available online for comment during the entirety of it's
>creation.  Bruce is a PostgreSQL developer, and one of the more active
>contributers to the PostgreSQL discussion lists.  I think this gives him
>a pretty keen sense of what types of issues the book needs to cover to
>address an introductory audience.

Thanks for the link, and wget. :) Haven't perused it yet, though
I'll probably head over to B&N immediately (/me checks clock) to look
for it because I'm computer-book insane. :)

I'm also beginning to learn PostgreSQL, for use with OpenACS.
I'd like to find a book the level and caliber of "MySQL" by
Paul DuBois; in that case, I'd gladly buy the so-called deadtree
version.

I think I even like PostgreSQL better than MySQL now (no grumbling
from the crowd, please :). It has object-like tables, so you can
do inheritance with them, and it also has this PL/pgSQL language
which you can use to program it (I just learned about this kind
of thing from a "bootcamp" where we used Oracle with PL/SQL);
it makes things pretty slick when you can just do

    class_foo.new(
        name => 'george'
        age  => 25
    )

(maybe the syntax isn't right, I just mean for example)
for inserting new rows into the database, and

    class_foo.list_by_age()

and it returns them ordered by age, things like that.

Also, there is an Emacs Lisp API. :) :)

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