On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Jackson, DeJuan wrote:
> So, has anyone tried the tutorials (with/with out success)? Let me know
> what did and didn't work for you.
I did not use tutorials too much since 1.0 or maybe even earlier, but those we have now do not seem different to me.
ThoseI tried before worked fine and were probably more useful than other parts of documentation, especially in the
beginning.Occasionally, I use queries from tutorials as ready templates for something else (that also includes the
"AdministrativeTasks" part of the manual), because I find it easier to remember the task itself, rather than how it was
done.I would contemplate increasing the coverage of new features in tutorials and, like I already suggested before,
isolatingexample codes in a special sgml data element, so they could be automatically processed and executed before
distribution,in order to check for their validity and such.
I no longer need that myself, but I was once disappointed to discover that the tutorial on extended types, originally
dedicatedto boxes and polygons, disappeared from the distribution because those types became built-ins. I don't think
thecomplex number type that is still there is sufficient for a novice to become a confident extension writer. This type
istoo simple for that. I had to work all the way through Hellerstein's GIST examples before R-trees started to make
enoughsense to me. Through a fair amount of trial and error, I have written a number of useful objects and I am willing
toshare the code, but I am afraid these will are too oversized for a tutorial. The 2-dimensional box was just right. I
wouldadvocate putting it back, under different name, so people could screw around with it without damaging their
databases.Because in my opinion, the whole subject of building extensions and interfacing them to access methods is too
complexto be just read about, without!
a hands-on experience.
--Gene