Hi Everyone,
I suffer from an affliction where I can't do anything technical without one of
them stone-aged book type things to kick me off. I would really welcome one
upon PostgreSQL, because although I've been following this mailing list for a
while, and would really love to see PostgreSQL kick Oracle et al into touch, I
just gotta have that book in my hand first. I suspect there are many out there
like me (on which Tim O'Reilly has based his fortune), and that a really good
"Learning PostgreSQL" type book would become a touchstone, and really blast it
into the big time. The small furry hot-blooded PostgreSQL could then really
get its teeth into the monolithic propriertary dinosaurs, and start bringing
them down, and moving the rest of us lightweights forward.
As a pre-newbie, I'd be very much inclined to want a book in the O'Reilly
"Apache: The Definitive Guide" style or the "Learning Perl/Tk" school, with
Chapter One entitled "Getting Started", right up to Chapter Ten "Come on You
Lightweight, It's Really Not That Difficult".
I don't think everything, or indeed a tenth of everything, has to be in the
first book; all the heavy technical stuff can be in the quasi-equivalents of
"Programming PostgreSQL", "Advanced PostgreSQL" and "Effective PostgresSQL".
This will not only help pre-newbies like me, as we pick it up, and then move
onto the heavier manuals, but give many different people the chance to become
authors, without leadening a vast single comprehensive book with a dull,
politically-correct "text by large committee" style, which will crush potential
sales (thereby enabling the dinosaurs to keep a steady grip on their database
stranglehold).
All the first book has to do is get a reluctant database hack like me, to get
our first PostgreSQL database going, and our first mini-system running along
the lines of Oracle's SCOTT/TIGER set-up, with a bit more for bonus points :-)
I'm sure there is an enormous marketplace of people like me, who've been
sitting out here like lemons, waiting for this kind of thing to appear. We're
sick of the thralldom of the West Coast Database Billionaires, but we're mostly
tied-in with a salaried financial dependence on their products, and possess the
sad aspect of rabbits trapped in headlights. It's pathetic I know, but if you
get it right, you could blow all these megalomaniacs away, and set the rest of
us free.
Good luck! :-)
Rgds,
AndyD
Ex-Informix 7.14 DBA
Ex-Sybase 11 User
Oracle8 Certified Professional DBA
Chief Lickspittle of the "Propriertary Databases Against Progress" Corporation
&
Future (hopefully) PostgreSQL Hacker
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