Rating: 
Summary: Hardcopy of on-line docs
Review: There's very little in the way of new information in this book; it's essentially a hard-copy of the on-line reference manual. Some people will find that valuable, but others won't. Buyer beware.
Rating: 
Summary: A Really Useful Reference
Review: This book came along at exactly the right time for me; i had learned PostgreSQL from Momjian's PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts. it wasn't bad, but ran out of steam on a couple of key points, such as stored procedures and triggers. while positioned as a reference, PostgreSQL Essential Reference also serves to nicely fill in the gaps.
Particularly welcome are the sections which address administration, performance tuning, and programming APIs.
The one oddity is that in spots, the book veers away from being a pure reference, and provides examples. if you happen to be looking for those particular examples, then this is not unwelcome, but it is curious to see what rated examples and lightweight tutorials (for example, stored procedures and triggers) and what didn't (the use of timestamp and interval types.)
Rating: 
Summary: High density PostgreSQL.
Review: This book is not for the beginner and it's not for casual reading. It's a high density, comprehensive reference work on PostgreSQL. It's the kind of book you grab when you know what you want to do but you just can't quite remember the syntax. The signal to noise ratio is very good. The book is laid out for fast thumbing to a specific topic. The production guys
doing serious work with PostgreSQL will want to keep this one handy.
Rating:
Summary: Good reference
Review: This is a good bare bones reference. When I received the book I was hoping it would help me with a few connection issues but I could not find them here. I still had to go to the net and search for quite a few hours. I'm glad that I have this book for command references.
Rating:
Summary: Good reference
Review: This is a good bare bones reference. When I received the book I was hoping it would help me with a few connection issues but I could not find them here. I still had to go to the net and search for quite a few hours. I'm glad that I have this book for command references.
Rating:
Summary: = * * * *
Review: This is a reference book. As of mid 2002, I do not see any other book which is comparable. This is not a book for teaching SQL or relational databases. This is a book which explains the aspects of PostgreSQL which are distinct to PostgreSQL, and gives brief detailed descriptions of the interfaces presented to users and developers working with PostgreSQL.For what it is, I think this book is pretty good. It would agree that it is a relatively thin layer on top of the PostgreSQL documentation; it does not have nearly the supplementary information that I would expect from, say, an O'Reilly "PostgreSQL in a nutshell", but alas there is no such book yet (Practical PostgreSQL is good but not comparable).
Rating:
Summary: = * * * *
Review: This is a reference book. As of mid 2002, I do not see any other book which is comparable. This is not a book for teaching SQL or relational databases. This is a book which explains the aspects of PostgreSQL which are distinct to PostgreSQL, and gives brief detailed descriptions of the interfaces presented to users and developers working with PostgreSQL. For what it is, I think this book is pretty good. It would agree that it is a relatively thin layer on top of the PostgreSQL documentation; it does not have nearly the supplementary information that I would expect from, say, an O'Reilly "PostgreSQL in a nutshell", but alas there is no such book yet (Practical PostgreSQL is good but not comparable).
Rating:
Summary: A reference - not a HOWTO
Review: To help me setup an accounting system on a PostgreSQL database, I purchased two books: I found that PostgreSQL Essential Reference answered 10% of my questions, and Beginning Databases with PostgreSQL answered 90% of my questions. PostgreSQL Essential Reference is like the title says, a reference.
Rating:
Summary: I have used this book over a month and I like it.
Review: With help "INDEX" I can find necessary command
and small example about it in few seconds. There is so much information on those 371 pages:
data types, operators, all functions with short examples,
admin utils and common administration tasks (backup, restore, users, rights),
server-side programming overview (PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl),
client-side programming overview (Perl,Python, PHP, ODBC, ...),
complete SQL command reference etc.
Lots of small examples.
If you need instruction how to use syslog for logging? Log rotating?
You find the answer very quickly.
Short, but interesting overview - PostgreSQL versus other RDBMs.
It's a small book, but there is a lot of good information inside :)
I use this book in my work and I recomend it.
Excelent PostgreSQL reference. Professional work.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: Wow this is one of the best tech books I've bought in a long time. It is definitely not for the beginner so don't even try it. But if you know relational databases and a little bit of unix, this book will give you what you need quickly. I can't believe such a small book can contain so much helpful info. The author writes clearly and gets to the point quickly. If you need hand holding go somewhere else. If you want to get going with your work this is it.
| 
