[TriLUG] Interesting article: Ellison: Linux will wipe Microsoft out of the data center

[Michael Alan Dorman]

"Roy Vestal" <rvestal at trilug.org> writes:

> Okey, so I'm getting an overwhelming sound to learn Postgres, as
> well as some saying learn Oracle. How should a non-xDB admin person
> start? Any suggestions on learning the basics?

Do you want to learn the administration end of the database, or SQL in
general?

If you want to learn to administer, well, both MySQL and PostgreSQL
are like falling off a log---just don't let the system run out of some
resource (disk, memory, processes, etc), and you'll be OK, and both
have good documentation on those tunables you're given.

Oracle is a whole different world, in terms of effort.  I can't
recommend any particular books, but if you're serious I could ask a
buddy who is a full-time Oracle DBA if he has anything to suggest.

If you want to learn SQL, I would recommend using PostgreSQL as your
learning tool---its SQL dialect is much closer to the ANSI standards,
and more resembles the higher-end databases dialects than MySQL does.

There's supposedly a new book on PostgreSQL out from New Riders called
_PostgreSQL_ by Korry and Susan Douglas that has recently gotten high
recommendations on pgsql-devel.  I haven't seen it personally.

I think the _PostgreSQL: Developer's Handbook_ by Ewald Geschwinde and
Hans-Jurgen Schoenig is a good book, though one of the authors
recently contacted me after I made that same statement in pgsql-devel
and suggested that _PHP and PostgreSQL Advanced Web Programming_ by
the same authors was much more up-to-date, and you get PHP at the same
time.

But whatever PostgreSQL book you might get should just be an adjunct
to the real heavy firepower, Date and Darwen's _A Guide to the SQL
Standard_, 4th Ed.  This is a great, great database book.  Everyone
who does anything more than toy databases should own it.

Yes, most of the examples use SQL embedded in PL/1, and it's a little
dry in places, but when you want to understand the value of left outer
joins or what the rules for column aliasing are, or even just to find
out that you can select all the columns from one table in a join
without having to type them all, it's invaluable.

Mike
-- 
I'd write a song called "Senorita with a Necklace of Tears" -- Paul Simon