Customer Reviews

PostgreSQL 8 for Windows (Database Professional's Library)

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I was interested in learning a bit about PostgreSQL, and coming from a SQL Server background on Windows systems, this seemed like a good place to start (I will pick up some more Linux knowledge another day). The book provides a good overview of components and processes, and for someone with experience in other database platforms, the material makes a good bridge.

It will probably not provide much new information to a PostgreSQL "expert", but that is not likely the intended audience. Basic admin topics are covered , as well as some development examples in MS Access, .NET, C++, and Java.

A highlight for me was the discovery of some SQL methods in PostgreSQL that were only supported in the latest release of MS SQL Server, and a few that still are not.

This book is largely an illustrated cut-down version of the manual for all important sections. I recommend saving yourself the money, biting the bullet and reading the (free!) PostgreSQL manual instead. I'd be very surprised if you need this book after doing so. Overall, a waste of money.

The book is a useful introduction to PostgreSQL on Windows. It covers the basics of PostgreSQL on the Windows platform. For C# programming it covers Npgsql. For Visual C++ it covers using libpq programming. What the book misses is using VC++ for building server side functions. For those who know about PostgreSQL much of its power and extensibility comes from using Server-side C functions. These can be built with VC++ and Visual Studio. For this book I view it as a big miss, but I still bought the book anyway.