Ask Slashdot: Learning DB the Right Way; Books, Tutorials, or What? 106
An anonymous reader writes "I have deep experience programming in many languages, and I've some exposure to SQL through PostgreSQL. My math goes so far as trig and algebra, with a little statistics. So far, I've learned enough to be dangerous: mostly via other people's code, experimenting, the PostgreSQL docs, etc. I've been successful using the DB in various ways, but I know I am missing a great deal (and probably doing it wrong, at that.) When DB articles come up on Slashdot, I don't recognize a good deal of the terminology. What is the best way for a technical person to learn SQL/DB work using PostgreSQL? Books? Tutorials? I should mention I don't have local access to a university or people with DB knowledge; have to do this on my own, so books or the Internet are pretty much my options."
Re: You haven't told us what you want/need to do. (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone once told me "Normalize until it hurts, then denormalize until it works."
Re:No Obligatory XKCD (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who has done a fair bit in mysql, mssql, and pgsql over the past 15 years, mysql is not anywhere close to the product mssql is. That being said, pgsql has become quite a bit better than mssql recently in many ways. So probably my current ordering, from best to worst, for my most common use case (web application data tier) is: pgsql, mssql, mysql
Now, of course it depends on the application! MSSQL has some pretty nice strategies for replication and multi master stuff that you just can't do with mysql. BUT MariaDB has some pretty nice multi-master stuff, and now has synchronous replication with Galera. If you want mysql to be anywhere near MSSQL on what I would consider "enterprise" replication, you gotta go MariaDB, and it just drops in.
Also, I don't think anyone would argue that the polish of the MSSQL administrative toolset is quite a bit beyond anything available free or commercial for pg or my. Plus you have Analysis Services (cube stuff) and integration services (which actually aren't too great), and lots of stuff built in to .NET framework for accessing and manipulating stuff. Plus all the built in authorization stuff, kerberos/AD, you name it. The backups work awesome. T-SQL is pretty good. Stored procs and functions are pretty solid. If you are a completely Microsoft shop, it's not a complete nightmare, except for the money. And the constant changes to product naming and licensing. And the support guys from India. Ok, it sucks, but it does have a place.
pgsql is just amazing with the groundbreaking things they are doing, and the programability is second to none, probably not even Oracle. Oracle does manage to stay ahead on some things, namely reporting workloads, but pgsql is the nerd's database, the computer scientist's database, and yet is surprisingly easy to use, maintain and make perform.
I'm leaving out Oracle because it's redic expensive and there are other good commercial DBs for Unix (like Ingres...maybe DB2) that should be mentioned more often than they are that are too much to go into.
But really, Mysql is shit. We have about 10 mysql servers running and a bunch of them are going to move to MariaDB fairly soon to get those replication features. Also, check out Percona, which is also a mysql replacement. I think Oracle and the remaining Sun people that haven't jumped ship have been doing an ok job keeping mysql alive enough but it's just not making the leaps it needs to stay relevant in the next 10 years. I hope they prove me wrong, but right now I am leaning towards stuff that will last 10 years and I don't see that being mysql.