[loquin]

Douglas, K. & Douglas, S. (2006) PostgreSQL. Sams Developer's Library Series (1006 pages - code available online)

At over one thousand pages, this is a large book. Since PostgreSQL is a large, mature product, you would expect that a book which would adequately cover most of it's features WOULD have some bulk. The Douglas' followed an interesting approach in the book; They reasoned that there are three basic groups, or classes of readers of a database book; people who need information on how to use the database, people who need information on how to develop applications that use the database, and those who need to administer the database. Granted, all of us wear different hats at different times, but, this is probably a solid approach to follow.

So, they built their book in three sections; the first section, titled Programming with PostgreSQL is aimed at the database user - it discusses how to use the database, and contains an introduction chapter, a chapter on working with data in PostgreSQL, a chapter on PostgreSQL's SQL syntax and use, and a chapter on performance.

The second section, titled Programming with PostgreSQL discusses both server-side programming and client-side programming. Server-Side programming includes an in-depth discussion of PL/pgSQL, used to write stored functions and procedures, a discussion of the PostgreSQL API's, and an overview of writing custom functions in C. The discussion of client-side processing includes chapters devoted to ODBC, Java, Perl, PHP, Tcl, Python, and .Net.

The third section is devoted to topics pertaining to PostgreSQL administration. This includes managing databases, user accounts, backup and recovery, point-in-time recovery, logging features, internationalization and localization, security, and replication, as well as exchanging data using XML, and applying the full text search capabilities.

I received this book on Friday; within 15 minutes, I had used it to solve a problem that I had been working on for a couple of hours. It's well written, and, the authors don't assume that all users will have the latest version of PostgreSQL installed - they discuss the differences between older versions of PostgreSQL and Version 8. It's earned a place on my bookshelf in only a week.