Customer Reviews

PostgreSQL Developer's Handbook

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a good start for anyone interested in using the PostgreSQL database server. This book covers the fundamentals from installing the server to basics of managing the databases and its users. My only gripe with this book was the lack of covereage of all the pg_* functions. It does talk about some of the functions but not all. In addition, the authors do not talk about the configuration files associated with PostgreSQL in depth. However, the questions that I did have were happily answered by Hans (one of the co-author of this book).

If you are a developer like myself that works with PERL, PHP, or Python, you will find the information in this book very helpful. The authors discuss in detail on how to interface PostgreSQL with these languages. In addition, there is a good tutorial on the basics of SQL and the terminologies associated with it. This is not a good reference on SQL but a good refresher.

If you are a complete novice to the world of databases, you might not find this book as easily digestible. This book does make certain assumptions, namely, familiarity and comfort with using a command prompt either on UNIX, Linux, or Windows. PostgreSQL is a little tricky to install on Windows if you are not comfortable with the assumptions made by the authors.

If you are a DBA, look elsewhere for advanced topics like load balancing and replication using PostgreSQL. This book is more of a welcome to PostgreSQL type than an advanced database management book using PostgreSQL.

Like every book in the market, this one is not perfect either. However, the positive aspects of this book far outweigh the missing literature. I would not recommend this book if you are a complete novice to databases. If you are coming from another database application or server, you will definitely feel comfortable with the author's informal style of presenting the information. Developers will also feel at home with this book and get up to speed fairly quickly.

This is a great PostgreSQL book, better in my opinion than the O'Reilly or Wrox book. They are all better than the book by Perkins.

This book is for someone who knows a little bit about SQL and databases.

The chaper on SQL is not too large, which is exactly what it should be. There are enough SQL books! The SQL chapter is to-the-point, more as an overview of available SQL functionality in the database. The O'Reilly book spends too much time being a SQL tutorial, combine that with a chapter on some product for Apache called LXP, and a whole section on commands, you are left with pretty much 50% of the book dedicated to SQL.

An end-user, with little database or SQL experience will probably like the Wrox book best. Someone who is going to administer PostgreSQL or a developer (especially a developer) will probably find this book more suited to their skill level and requirements.

The book is well written and covers most of the major items of concern. Part II of the book includes real world examples, which are very helpful. The largest chaper is chapter 9, which covers programming interfaces between various languages such as C, Perl, Python, PHP, Java, etc. There is also a helpful chapter on dealing with binary data and date calculations.

In my opinion, this book, along with the New Riders reference book, work well together.

I infer from the title that this book is not primarily for end users or DBAs, but instead for developers who want to interact with PostgreSQL as part of a larger application context. I do not see any other books in mid 2002 which seem to have the same target.

I would say this book goes into a little more depth for the application developer than the other notable PostgreSQL books I have seen (Practical pgsql, pgsql Essential Reference, Beginning Databases with pgsql), but not much, and the more useful information is mixed with a lot of less useful information.

I do not think this book is a waste of money, but it is definitely not a must have.

I really wanted to like this book since it was the only one in my local book store and I needed a reference.

I've read other reviews saying this book was developed as a reference for developers. Unfortunately every time I pick it up as a reference I am truly disappointed.

The worst aspect is the book's index. I can not recall the last time I found anything I needed in the index. For example, I quickly needed to read the details on NEXTVAL (or however you spell it). As soon as I'm done with this review (this was the straw that broke the camel's back), I'll call up Google and find the answer. I can not recall any definition I've needed that I found in the index of this book.

Of secondary distaste is the treatment of basic syntax. This is less of a reference to the syntax than the Linux psql 'h' command provides. I wouldn't buy this book again if there was a better alternative. In fact, I'm leaning towards MySQL as a replacement since documentation seems to be better.

I can't give this book 5 stars. But I can give it 4. Compared to all the other PostgreSQL books, its the best compared to the rest....

But its problematic to buy a PostgreSQL book at this time (December 1, 2002) because of versioning. Currently, the newest version out is 7.3. But all these books as of this posting are based on version 7.1 or below ugh... hopefully this is a minor issue. Too bad there are very few books to choose from... but after reading and studying the few pgsql books on the shelf, this is the winner.

This book touched too many things but with very shallow coverage on each subjest. It looks a direct copy from the online documentation. It is a pure waste of trees. In certain places, the author missed very important things. For example, the ExecCommandOk command is totally missed from this book.

As an reference book this book is too shallow. As an tutorial it is not good enough.

I am really, really trying to like this book, but on the issues which are most important to me, it has let me down. If you are new to PostGreSQL, this book will suit you fine. However, the book doesn't give you any information that the documentation does not. In fact, it sometimes gives you less information. For example, when writing functions in C, the book fails to mention VarChar* as a data type. Additionally, the book states that compiling and linking require special flags, and that your compiler docs will provide this information. In contrast, the online docs explicitly give you the flags for BSD, Free/Net/OpenBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, and UnixWare.

If you want to learn PostGreSQL, this is a suitable book. However, if you want to explore the more advanced features of PostGreSQL, this book is not for you.

This book about PostgreSQL is by far the best available on the market. Unlike Oracle there are not many books on PostgreSQL. This book is written for developer who want to use PostgreSQL for data storage. It covers important parts like pl/pgsql, libpg, Perl.
It also covers PostgreSQL administration to a certain level, including installation and maintance.
I use this book a lot and I think it a very good desktop reference.

I am fairly new to PostgreSQL although i have nearly 6 years of solid database experience. I brought a brand new copy of this book, so i could quickly pick up the essentials of postgresql without having to read through a lot of fluff.Unfortunately most of the code of the code samples that i have tried testing has given me erroneous messages.I have tried contacting the support team for this book and am yet to get a response.
To me as a reader the purpose of buying this book is defeated.
I wouldn't recommend this to any serious PostgreSQL developer:(

this is one of the best books about databases i have seen recently. especially the section about binary data and the date stuff is cool.