Re: Book

Peter......

> I currently own a copy of "PostgreSQL Developer's Handbook" by Geshwinde
> and Schonig, 2002. Would this still be good enough to start making
> databases in the current version of PostgreSQL?

In my opinion, yes.  The admin and SQL statements are still much the same.
Plus there is much documentation online for you to read, you can pick up
any changes there.

> I'm thinking of developing in Windows but if Linux proves more stable
> I'd be tempted to develop in that.

I do programming work as a side job for a friend who hosts many websites,
plus have a few database backed websites of my own.  We host on *nix
machines, when we started there were few, if any, web servers on windows
machines, but today it's possible to host on windows.  I still prefer
FreeBSD and linix for hosting, but I've never tried windows for hosting,
so I can't really comment.  There are others here who run postgreSQL on
windows, they can chip in.

I develop on my laptop, I have one plugin drive that boots to XP and
another drive that boots to Debian linux.  I use the linux drive more than
80% of the time.

> I've had some small experience with mysql but I've read that PostgreSQL
> doesn't buckle under high loads and that it supports referential
> integrity.

On my linux laptop and my main online webserver machine (both Debian
linux) I have both postgreSQL and mysql database servers running
simultaneously.  Some websites use one and some the other (and some
neither!).

Note that these are small litely used websites, about one pageview a
second or so (but it can easily handle more).  My biggest table in any
database is less than 50,000 rows.  I connect to the databases via perl
and/or php.  There are others on the list with big heavily used databases
that get many (hundreds of?) hits a second with gigs of rows.  They have
the webserver on one machine and postgreSQL on another machine.

I favor *nix machines.  Keep reading the lists, get something loaded and
running properly and you'll soon find the way it works for you.

Welcome.....

brew

Both my personal websites in my .sig below use postgreSQL with php and
Apache and perl for the backend cron processes, btw.

 ==========================================================================
                  Strange Brew   (brew@theMode.com)
  Check out my Stock Option Covered Call website  http://www.callpix.com
     and my Musician's Online Database Exchange http://www.TheMode.com
 ==========================================================================