Обсуждение: Question about Lockhart's book

On 12/27/2013 10:55 AM, Christian Convey wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm starting to poke around the internals of Postgres.  Does anyone 
> know the extent to which Thomas Lockhart's book, "PostgresSQL 
> Programmer's Guide" is accurate with respect to the current state of 
> the code base?
>
>

Umm, that book was published in 2000, from what I can see on Amazon. 
Would you use a book published 13 years ago to educate yourself on, say, 
the Linux code base? 13 years is an eternity in this business.

cheers

andrew

On 12/27/2013 08:14 AM, Christian Convey wrote:
> Hi Andrew,
> 
> Thanks for your response.  Sometimes overall software architectures stay
> (mostly) unchanged for a long time, and so I figured that's possibly the
> case for Postgresql as well.  But I didn't know, which is why I asked.

Some things in that book will still be accurate and informative.  The
problem is that you, as a beginner, won't know which things are still
good and which are obsolete.

I'd suggest:

- Developer documentation in our primary docs
- Developer FAQ on the wiki
- Bruce's presentations on various internals
- Tom's presentations on how the query planner works
- Various other people's presentations on other aspects, such as foreign
data wrappers, event triggers, etc.

Unfortunately, there's no central index of presentations.

I'm a big fan of "learn by doing", and here's a program which would
bring you up on a LOT of PostgreSQL:

1. Write a few of your own C functions, including trigger functions and
an operator.

2. Write your own foreign data wrapper for something.

3. Write your own Type, including input/output functions, stats
estimation and custom indexing.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

<div dir="ltr">Thanks very much Josh.  Those sound like great ideas - I'll try to give them a shot. </div><div
class="gmail_extra"><br/><br /><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 1:52 PM, Josh Berkus <span
dir="ltr"><<ahref="mailto:josh@agliodbs.com" target="_blank">josh@agliodbs.com</a>></span> wrote:<br
/><blockquoteclass="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div
class="im">On12/27/2013 08:14 AM, Christian Convey wrote:<br /> > Hi Andrew,<br /> ><br /> > Thanks for your
response. Sometimes overall software architectures stay<br /> > (mostly) unchanged for a long time, and so I figured
that'spossibly the<br /> > case for Postgresql as well.  But I didn't know, which is why I asked.<br /><br
/></div>Somethings in that book will still be accurate and informative.  The<br /> problem is that you, as a beginner,
won'tknow which things are still<br /> good and which are obsolete.<br /><br /> I'd suggest:<br /><br /> - Developer
documentationin our primary docs<br /> - Developer FAQ on the wiki<br /> - Bruce's presentations on various
internals<br/> - Tom's presentations on how the query planner works<br /> - Various other people's presentations on
otheraspects, such as foreign<br /> data wrappers, event triggers, etc.<br /><br /> Unfortunately, there's no central
indexof presentations.<br /><br /> I'm a big fan of "learn by doing", and here's a program which would<br /> bring you
upon a LOT of PostgreSQL:<br /><br /> 1. Write a few of your own C functions, including trigger functions and<br /> an
operator.<br/><br /> 2. Write your own foreign data wrapper for something.<br /><br /> 3. Write your own Type,
includinginput/output functions, stats<br /> estimation and custom indexing.<br /><span class="HOEnZb"><font
color="#888888"><br/> --<br /> Josh Berkus<br /> PostgreSQL Experts Inc.<br /><a href="http://pgexperts.com"
target="_blank">http://pgexperts.com</a><br/><br /><br /> --<br /> Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (<a
href="mailto:pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org">pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org</a>)<br/> To make changes to your
subscription:<br/><a href="http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers"
target="_blank">http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers</a><br/></font></span></blockquote></div><br /></div> 

On 12/27/13, 11:14 AM, Christian Convey wrote:
> Thanks for your response.  Sometimes overall software architectures stay
> (mostly) unchanged for a long time, and so I figured that's possibly the
> case for Postgresql as well.  But I didn't know, which is why I asked. 

That book is actually snapshot of part of the PostgreSQL documentation
at that time.  It's not a software architecture book.