training as a means of advocacy?

This is a suggestion; I do not need a reply.

I’m a DB novice fleeing from MS Access to opensource, considering various options, and finding that the complexity of the software offerings is quite daunting!

So far, in my quest for training, I have found several very expensive options and several discussions about why certification is/is not a good idea.  I have no idea whether many other people in need of software to build databases are looking at opensource tools, but since this is your ‘advocacy’ forum, I suggest that one way to increase adoption of the software is to make it more accessible to people who need a solution.

That may seem obvious, but what I see is that if a non-geek wants to escape the limits of Excel or the intense convolution of Access, there are few (if any) opensource options.  There’s OpenOffice’s Calc and Base, but they seem to offer the sole advantage of a free price for merely clones of the problems, if I’m not mistaken (currently testing and finding this to be true).  Otherwise, one who is not already a programmer and/or savvy database developer must choke down the price of FileMaker or 4D or something like that.  As for me, and I bet with many, my company will not provide “non-standard software”.  The standard is Excel, Access, Oracle; and Oracle is only available to the IT department.  The only way I can break the rules is to download opensource (no invoice, no red flags...)

MySQL bills itself as “easy”.  Anyone can do it.  [insert expletive here]!!!  So, I got Navicat, which makes things easier for the non-guru.  But it’s still grossly complicated, and training costs a fortune, or gobs of time.  Both.  So, I found some cheap online tutorials, which explained differences among various kinds of databases, and found that I would prefer an object-relational database over a relational one.  Out goes MySQL, which I will not miss.  Navicat makes their GUI for PostgreSQL, too.

However, I am finding training is even more difficult to find for PostgreSQL.  My situation requires online courses or travel to a classroom for a short course; onsite training isn’t cost effective for one person.  Unless I want to go to Germany, all classes I can find assume the student already knows Linux and SQL and has experience with a similar program like Oracle, and is familiar with numerous acronyms.

So here’s my point: If you want to just keep competing for acceptance and adoption of PostgreSQL by the highly paid, highly trained pool of database development experts who are competing for work in a finite market of enterprise database clients, then fine.  I’m sure all those people have plenty of time to search your forums all day to learn the ropes.  But, if you want to attract the attention of a large segment of industry consisting of people who are not trained in programming, who do not have huge budgets, who can’t spend all their time searching the Internet for technical help, and who nevertheless need to build databases for their work; then you should skip the certification issue and put some effort into helping such people climb the ladder from the ground up.

I know, there’s an argument to be made that such people do not need an enterprise system to handle their little databases with their cute little reports and entry forms and charts.  Even so, if it works for big systems it should handle small ones just fine.  Most people don’t need most of the features of most software that they use anyway, right?  If many average joes use, and get to really like, PostgreSQL then its popularity will spread, especially given the price, and managers will notice productivity gains, and pretty soon they’ll ask why in the heck they should go through all those painful steps to get IT to make database solutions for them when their own people can do it using free software in half the time (and be pleased with the product)?

There are already several free tutorials on SQL, database design, and data modeling.  The rest is a mystery.  A very complicated one.  I challenge you geeks to make it palatable to us newbies (or whatever you call us).

Thanks