Re: [NOVICE] PostgreSQL Training

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 12:03, Stephan Szabo wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Bret Busby wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Bryan Encina wrote:
> >
> > Unfortunately, the result of the lack of formal, structured, PostgreSQL
> > training and certification, and the apparent resistance to these, in
> > the PostgreSQL community, is that, like the Perl people, the result is
>
> I don't think there's a resistance to them except that setting up training
> and certification costs money. Some of us don't do this as a job at all,
> some are in relatively small companies doing support/hosting and some are
> in unrelated fields and just use it. The first and third group aren't
> generally going to run training, it's outside what they do. The second
> group generally either doesn't have the money to do it, or at least needs
> it to be truly obviously profitable before they can really consider it.  A
> small company that puts down a few months to set up training and then
> doesn't get enough people to break even goes away, it's a pretty big risk.
>

Please be aware there are several companies that do provide training,
check the main website for examples. Furthermore Bruce Momjian does a
semi-annual training class himself, and has mentioned that people are
not exactly beating a path to his door.  Just because the
training/certification is not centralized and dictated doesn't mean it
is not available.

Furthermore if you're really interested in learning about databases and
want some type of certification, I'd strongly recommend learning oracle
or even m$ before going to my$ql, both are more fundamentally oriented
toward postgresql. Actually I'd earmark your training dollars for
something like the Open Source conference, which usually provides a good
chunk of information.

As far as books go, I think the best book on the market right now is
probably Korry Douglas' book "PostgreSQL", but I think you'll find most
people here recommend you read books like SQL for Smarties (Celko),
Practical Issues in Database Management (Pascal),  or An Introduction to
Database Systems (Date). Much to the chagrin of Herr Fabian, we aren't
just here to push a product, we want users to be educated.


Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL