Обсуждение: PostgreSQL book completed though chapter 10

I have completed the first draft of my book through chapter 10.

New chapters include:

    Chapter 7, Numbering rows:  OID's, sequences

    Chapter 8, Combining Selects:  UNION, subqueries

    Chapter 9, Data Types:  types, functions, operators, arrays

    Chapter 10,Transactions and Locks:  transactions, locking

The books is accessible at:

    http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html

Comments welcomed.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> I have completed the first draft of my book through chapter 10.
>

Bruce, it's looking very nice!

Just browsing the TOC though, a couple of things struck me as odd/missing and
if I were reviewing the book when finished I'd query these!

First the pitch of the book seems a bit mixed. There is a lot of
introductionary material on how to create a table, joins etc. inthe early
chapters, but the book also covers quite advanced topics like user-defined
functions. The reader is either going to skip the early chapters, or get lost
in the later ones. If you really do want to cover such a broad spectrum, what
about splitting the book into Part I - Introducing RDBMS and Part II - Using
PostgreSQL (or something similar)

Information on primary/foreign key constraints only appeared under the
'Joining Tables' chapter - I don't know how complete this chapter is, but the
terms were defined with no suggestions about creating tables using these terms
or using other constraints.

I could see nothing about the object-relational features in terms of creating
tables, etc.

I would really like to see a PostgreSQL SQL reference as well - this I guess
would be taken largely from the man pages.


In summary, I like the style and the contents as far as it goes, but I think
there are some important things missing (judging from the TOC) and personally I
feel the organisation is a little odd.


Hope you feel these comments have been useful.


Best wishes,


Andrew


--
Dr. Andrew C.R. Martin          EMail:  a.c.r.martin@reading.ac.uk  (work)
Lecturer in Bioinformatics              andrew@stagleys.demon.co.uk (home)
University of Reading
Tel.: +44 (0)118 987 5123x7022  Fax:    +44 (0)118 931 0180

> On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > I have completed the first draft of my book through chapter 10.
> >
>
> Bruce, it's looking very nice!
>
> Just browsing the TOC though, a couple of things struck me as odd/missing and
> if I were reviewing the book when finished I'd query these!
>
> First the pitch of the book seems a bit mixed. There is a lot of
> introductionary material on how to create a table, joins etc. inthe early
> chapters, but the book also covers quite advanced topics like user-defined
> functions. The reader is either going to skip the early chapters, or get lost

I am only going to cover the concept of them, not show how to do them.

> in the later ones. If you really do want to cover such a broad spectrum, what
> about splitting the book into Part I - Introducing RDBMS and Part II - Using
> PostgreSQL (or something similar)
>
> Information on primary/foreign key constraints only appeared under the

Well, I am working on the Performance/index section, which is still
pretty basic.  I don't plan to get really into those advanced topics.

> 'Joining Tables' chapter - I don't know how complete this chapter is, but the
> terms were defined with no suggestions about creating tables using these terms
> or using other constraints.

I am going to do that after 7.0 is released.  Contraints will be added
too.

>
> I could see nothing about the object-relational features in terms of creating
> tables, etc.

Well, I have inheritance mentioned.

>
> I would really like to see a PostgreSQL SQL reference as well - this I guess
> would be taken largely from the man pages.

Yes, man pages will be at the end of the book.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> I have completed the first draft of my book through chapter 10.
>
> New chapters include:
>
>         Chapter 7, Numbering rows:  OID's, sequences
>
>         Chapter 8, Combining Selects:  UNION, subqueries
>
>         Chapter 9, Data Types:  types, functions, operators, arrays
>
>         Chapter 10,Transactions and Locks:  transactions, locking
>
> The books is accessible at:
>
>         http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html
>
> Comments welcomed.
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
>   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

I just Finished reading your book, I did work along with the text up to
chapter
4. I hope to finish that up when I get the time.  It is looking great.
I am a pgsql beginner and this book has help me out a lot.

I know that data modeling is a huge subject, but you might want to add a
small chapter on that subject.

I look forward to reading more drafts, and thank you for the great work
so far.

Richrad