Learning PostgreSQL: Create, develop and manage relational databases in real world applications using PostgreSQL

The book starts out with a nice and conveniently brief but concise summary of all the main terms and concepts of database theory, including NoSQL and (object)relational databases. One does well to read up on the former (NoSQL) concept on the web since there are more than 225 of them as of today (nosql-database.org), whereas the book will focus on the SQL concepts afterwards. I really liked the fact that the authors do not shy away from explaining even the most basic terms in significant detail; this way absolute beginners will also fully benefit from the book, whereas more experienced programmers and administrators can simply just skim through these parts for a quick refresher. As an example, the often problematic concept of "unknown" (NULL) values and their relationship with TRUE and FALSE values is very nicely handled, including the truth tables for OR, AND and NOT.The basic concepts are also put into context via a well-detailed example application of a car web-portal, including detailed flow- and relationship charts (ER diagrams), which will help even the very beginners to understand the way of thinking required in database design. All code is available from the publisher, which saves the programmer a lot of typing time and typos.The detailed description of PostgreSQL is very complete, with history, concepts and sample applications. I would add to their "Success stories" the very popular and well established image database application OMERO (http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site), which has been around for 10 years and is being used by hundreds of research labs and institutions around the world, as well as by scientific journals. I personally installed OMERO, and thus PostgreSQL, many times and always found installing PostgreSQL very straightforward. The book will also guide the readers through these steps, including server settings, adding users, administration, etc. The setting up of clients is described in great detail, rightly so since this is the key concept for main users of databases once the installation is done.The book does a great job in explaining all the details of setting up the database, editing and acquiring its data, at the same time pointing out the most typical mistakes that users and administrators will encounter. Special emphasis is given to the various data types in relation not only to fitting the task at hand, but also to maintain and adjust the database to future demands. E.g., the great flexibility of the "text" type is given properly detailed description in Chapter 3. Using the same database example of the car web-portal throughout the book helps the reader to relate all new theoretical information easily to practicality.The later chapters (from Chapter 4) deal with more advanced concepts. These are crucial for those developing more demanding database applications and thus are very useful for the more experienced developers as well. For example, VIEWS are especially nicely described, which demand-dependent web application developers will certainly appreciate. Similarly well treated are the details of the very important concept of indexing.Those who want to go even further and extend the default functionality of PostgreSQL, may do so by writing their own FUNCTIONs in various languages. This is a difficult concept even for experienced developers, but the book does a great job by presenting these via simple yet realistic examples, including concrete code snippets in C and SQL (PL/pgSQL is described in Chapter 7). For me this came very handy with the OMERO database system, where I often needed to add server functionality for various research applications.Naturally, the book also handles the more generic advanced concepts that are used to automate databases, most importantly TRIGGERs.In Chapters 5 and 6 the readers will get a nice summary of the SQL language itself, and of advanced query writing. These concepts may already be familiar to many advanced readers, who may wish to give these chapters just a quick read.In Chapter 7 the authors describe PostgreSQL's default server-side programming language, PL/pgSQL. The advantage of using PL/pgSQL instead of SQL becomes clear very quickly and then the reader is happily immersed in the details of this powerful yet simple language. This chapter is quite long, but worth the effort.No such book would be complete without discussing the subject of data security, and Chapter 8 takes care of this in great detail. Especially nowadays, when hacking is exceptionally common, every database application developer needs to be very careful about security, and this chapter covers this task very well. Those readers who are completely new to the subject may also want to read a more detailed work on general web security, or rely on the experience of professional IT personnel when setting up their servers that will be open to the Internet.When administering a database, we face a certain group of standard tasks, and the book teaches the reader this subject in a cookbook format in Chapter 9. I love this, because here one really appreciates a well described and concrete action plan, rather than lots of theory. Find the task, follow the steps in this chapter, done! For those who want to know more, "There is more..." as the extra paragraphs at the end of each recipe are called; these describe additional ways to achieve the goal, or give more details.For more demanding applications, database optimization is especially important. This may not be a developer's favorite task, but the material in Chapter 10 will help us through it. Lots of ideas about common mistakes, streamlining queries, finding bottlenecks, these are all there. I found many new ideas here, even though I've been coding for databases for many years.The chapter on unconventional data types (Chapter 11) really helps those who customize their database applications heavily. The OMERO example cited above comes to mind here, especially in relation to XML and JSON data handling.A very important but often (somewhat) overlooked part of a developer's job is testing the application. This will be greatly helped by reading Chapter 12 for PostgreSQL coders. Once again a difficult subject, but handled well and smoothly here.Accessing your PostgreSQL database from external applications will be made much easier by Chapter 13, which describes JDBC, a platform that allows communication with PostgreSQL from a Java application. The examples are well structured and cover the most common users' needs.On the related subject of Object-relational mapping, Chapter 14 gives a nice review, including an introduction to the Hibernate framework. This a very advanced subject, but great to have for those on a more advanced level, or those who are aiming for this level.Overall, a well written book with a very wide range of subjects within the realm of PostgreSQL database management and development. Easy to read, free source code for the samples (this is automatic if one buys the book from the publisher, which is what I do; otherwise easily received via e-mail per request), which saves a lot of typing, and great examples throughout.

After a quick read and practicing some sample code, I can say this is a great learning guide for database programming with PostgreSQL.Some valuable information well explained as :relational database compared with others (graph, NoSQL, ...), relational algebra, installation, using client tools, objects in PostgreSQL as SQL components (tables, views, ...) and Object in PostgreSQL as an ORDBMS, DDL, DML and DCL, advanced queries, Common Table Expressions, window functions, UDF in C, encryption (one-way and two-way), unit testing, queries rewriting, optimization in many aspects, user datatypes, benchmark ... java with JDBC api (install, connect, static statement, prepared statements, cursors, calling stored functions) and finally ORM and Hibernate.Authors present an overview of PostgreSQL for developers. Each topic is clearly explained and accompanied by functional and realistic examples, some based on a case study (The car web portal database). This example follows the reader through chapters.Reading this book is pleasant. I enjoyed an easy and very smooth reading for non-English-speaking people. Examples are numerous and facilitate understanding of concepts.It would have been nice to explain inheritance not only for partitioning but also with an example of a specialized child table from a generic table ... as in OOP.Finally, a great book if you are student or professional developer who want to start learning PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL is an open source object relational database management system and as open source it is popular in academia and industry. This book provides a solid description of PostgreSQL in one volume that covers many topics that beginners and experienced users likely face at their daily work. At the same time, authors succeeded to put a lot of material into a not too lengthy book. The book is useful for both a BI engineer whose bread-and-butter is SQL programming and a system administrator maintaining, monitoring, and tuning databases. Advanced topics such as views, functions, user-defined data types, database security, database performance optimization, and unit tests for databases are described in sufficient details.

Book purpose is clear: Create, develop, and manage relational databases in real-world applications using PostgreSQL. And the author has over 10 years of experience in industry and academia (you can notice in the first chapter, with a great overview of relational databases).For sure the book is rich of information (with 464 pages and 14 chapters) useful both for admins and developers.Admins can use the first chapters (from 2) to better understand PostgreSQL, but the installation part remain little poor, and some parts, like system related optimization (chapter 10 is dedicated to the optimization aspects, but more at developer level) or high availability deployment are totally missed. Security is covered in chapter 8, both for admins and developers point of view.For sure will be more useful for a developer, also at a beginner level on this DMBS, with lot of information on the SQL and the PL/pgSQL languages and how writing better and advanced queries.There is also a chapter dedicated on Server-Side Programming with PL/pgSQL, useful for complex applications.

I have no idea how this book got 5 stars. The book is a non-stop string of informational tidbits with no coherent direction. There seems to be no plan to progress the reader through learning PostgreSQL in any sort of structured way. You'd be better off downloading the PostgreSQL code and trying to understand PostgreSQL that way.