relational databases

I was surprised at how advanced this book was. It starts with the usual introduction to basic SQL access to PostgeSQL, then has a two chapters on data types and syntax, and then jumps straight into performance and extensions stuff. It then covers PL/pgSQL. The majority of the second section of the book is examples of writing for Postgres with various programming languages (e.g. C, C++, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, etc.)

I liked the advanced content, but I was looking for a book on Postgres basics. So I don't think I got the right thing. My advice to you is, check out the table of contents, and make sure you are getting the content you need. If you are looking for a basic Postgres reference, this is not going to have much content for you.

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I am updating this review and giving it an additional star now that I have been through the whole book. It rates 4 stars for it's overall clear writing and completeness. Here follows my original review ...

I am only part way through chapter 3 but I thought it worth writing a short review to warn about the example database in this book.

From one page to the next tables in the example database mysteriously add or drop fields. This would be OK if the book led you through a logical progression where the changes made sense, but the differences seem gratuitous. (Do tapes have a duration or not?) Also, if you try to keep up by adding, removing, creating and droping things as you follow along you start to get into trouble as referential integrity (a great SQL feature supported by PostgreSQL) prevents you from doing the right thing.

The example code is available on a website, but the link given in the book doesn't work. A little hunting around will get you there but it would be nice if the authors kept the link mentioned in the book.

When you do find the sample code on the web site you will notice that it needs to be downloaded in seperate chunks, one for each chapter - a minor annoyance. One isn't sure if it is OK to untar them all in one dierctory or not. (It's not. Here is a shell script to help:)

#!/bin/bash
for f in chapter??.tgz ; do
d=$\{f/.tgz} # please remove the backslash -- I had to put it in to get the rest of the line to display in this review
mkdir -p $d
echo -n "Processing $f ..."
tar -C $d -zxf $f
echo " done"
done

Given that the example in the book keeps morphing from one page to the next it is not surprising that the sample code on the web page doesn't match the examples in the book. It would need several versions to match just the changes within one chapter.

I do give the book good marks for clear writing and for making the concepts understandable. Right now I am just frustrated by the examples.

A large section of the book goes into PL/pgSQL programming. Like Oracle's PL/SQL or SQL Server's T-SQL, PostgreSQL has it's own SQL programming language. The book discusses the basics of using PL/pgSQL in addition to more complex information (including cursors and triggers).

The next section of the book really go into examples of using PostgreSQL in specific development environments. Specifically, chapters are dedicated to the use of PostgreSQL in Java code (examples are provided in which JDBC connections are made), PHP and Perl, and even ODBC (for those of us using non-open source languages). I especially liked these chapters, as they really helped me see exactly how to implement database calls to PostgreSQL.

The last third of the book is really designed for database administrators. In this section, information is provided on doing everything you need to do from a DBA perspective on PostgreSQL. There is information on configuration, security, and internationalization. One section I particularly found useful was on things to watch out for when running PostgreSQL in a Windows environment (specifically during installation).