Comments about oreilly Practical PostgreSQL:

I have to slam this book as well.

Is was helpful with installation and initial configurations, but there was little or no explanation on how to interface with the database in Perl, C/C++, or any other standard language. It is as if the author never expectred you to use the database for a web-based application.

A poor index doesn't help.

The book suppports 7.1 and we are now on 7.4 and there is no "Second Edition" yet. I hope that a second edition (if there is one) os better organized.

--madvax

Comments about oreilly Practical PostgreSQL:

I mostly worked on Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL before finally making the jump to PostgreSQL. Clearly PostgreSQL is the most robust

database I have used so far. Of all the PostgreSQL I own (at last count that was 5), the O'reilly book "Pratical prostgreSQL" is the one I refer to

most often. I use this book almost every day and cannot tell you how often this

book has helped. The examples given are usually bang on to the specific needs that I encountered.

My only concern with the book is that it doesn't cover PHP, which seems to be a natural fit for the best and most reliable open source database.

Comments about oreilly Practical PostgreSQL:

I am a dyed-in-the-wool O'Reilly book fan. At home and at work I have several dozen unix/linux, windows, database, and diverse programming language titles. They are readable, well-engineered books, by and large, and they have helped me immeasurably over the years, an ROI that I will probably never match elsewhere.

Except for Practical PostgreSQL.

My god, does this book suck. The most egregious of its defects, are its table of contents and its index. They are so brief and incomplete, that they alone render the book practically useless. We are not talking about an electronic document. which is searchable by hook or by crook. We are talking about a 600+ page physical book. To depend on exhaustive, page-by-page searches or serendipitous surprise to find things is crippling at best.

I will not dwell on any other issues, such as lack of coverage of the PostgreSQL Catalog, the lack of programming tips in C, C++, or perl, etc. I hope the next edition, if one is ever produced, will represent an overhaul of the book's coverage and a robust indexing project. I will wait to see the online user reviews befor buying it, though.