Re: books

Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> If you are using the book to learn SQL it won't be that far off and having
> a paper version can be convenient. For administration, I would suggest reading
> the current online docs.
>
> The online docs make a very nice reference book. It may even be worth
> printing out as a paper book if you can build postscript files from the
> docs. This isn't easy and the PS docs for 7.4 aren't premade and available
> for download. As an alternative I have the html version of the docs installed
> locally so that I can easily look through them.
>

Thanks to you and Glenn I will probably keep my books around for a while
and look into printing the online docs.

But I've been properly warned that:
if something doesn't seem to work right, check the online docs.
Online docs will show more features.
All admin and "under the hood" activity should consult the online docs.

I've been doing oracle databases (user perspective) and can write some
SQL, I just need to be certain I've got the "care and feeding" correct.

I've had to "administer" in the past MySQL, but that's a very different
system. or so it seems.  I just have to muck around for a bit.

for instance...
Oracle as a set of tables to show table_names, column names.. that are
there, but you have to know what they are named.
Does postgresql have this similar feature in databases?

Similarly, how would I find out what user settings are?

I guess I'm trying to bridge the difference between MySQL's process of
INSERTing a user ID into a database table and modifying it for access
versus the postgres method of CREATE USER.  How do I access user status
from the sql line, can I?