My advice, for what it is worth...
Get Momjian's "PostgreSQL : Introduction and Concepts"
and supplement it with a good general purpose SQL book
Celko's "SQL for Smarties" gets high marks. And start
experimenting with PostgreSQL. Of course, I much
prefer to learn from books than classes.
Then simply pay attention to some of the PostgreSQL
mailing lists. You would be surprised what you can
learn just by lurking on these lists. And asking
questions about schemas and queries is actually
encouraged. So feel free to ask specific questions.
The benefit, in my opinion, to technical courses over
textbooks is that technical courses provide you with a
teacher who (hopefully) can answer specific questions
and clue you in to real life examples and tricks of
the trade. PostgreSQL's mailing lists have filled
that need for me fairly well.
As for your specific problem, storing documents in
PostgreSQL is now pretty straightforward now that the
8K row limitation is gone, searching those documents
(especially if they are binary formats like Word
documents) is another story, but not impossible (I
haven't used the text indexing stuff so I don't know
how well it works).
Access control to those documents should also be
fairly straightforward. Especially if a single
entrance fee gets the user access to all content. In
any even your problem will almost certainly fall into
one of several design categories. Keeping track of
which users should be granted access to which
documents boils down to a fairly simple many to many
relationship.
Jason
--- SuperDutyTA73@aol.com wrote:
> X-No-archive: yes
>
> It appears that this message failed to post, so I am
> trying again.
> I actually tried this twice with Deja, once more
> with a mailer program
> that I have used for the first time which also
> doesn't seem to work,
> and now this time. If you see this message more
> than once, please
> accept my apologies.
>
> I need to create several web sites in which visitors
> can access and
> input information to a database. The site will
> consist of free input
> by the general public, but using a user
> name/password scenario, and
> free/paid input by an industry group, depending on
> content. The
> database will hold the information, and will have to
> also track which
> content is chargeable, and deny/allow access based
> on whether industry
> users have paid for the particular input.
>
> I have been using Access 2000 just to get an idea
> for
> layout/relationships, etc. Other than that, I have
> no experience with
> database use/design, or SQL. I will be using
> PostgreSQL, and have
> purchased several books on SQL, PHP 4.0, and
> Unix/Linux. I have also
> sucked up every possible site that I can find that
> offers free online
> info/training on open source databases, and SQL. I
> have installed
> Mandrake 8.0, with PostgreSQL, and have RH 7.1
> waiting in the wings. I
> would like to get some formal training on databases.
> There are many
> technical schools in my area. What would you
> recommend? Take a
> technical course such as Oracle 8i, which I would be
> willing to take
> all the way to the 5 certification test point, or
> just a SQL course,
> which is much shorter, and much cheaper? There
> really aren't any
> other options, except MS SQL 2000. Or am I making a
> mistake taking
> something like Oracle, if using PostgreSQL? Should
> I look for a cheap
> copy of Oracle/Keystone Training on an auction site
> instead of the
> classroom training? And will Oracle be the correct
> choice? The only
> other CD/Video training offered is usually SQL or MS
> SQL 7/2000 by
> these companies. What's the best choice of the
> above scenarios to
> get a good foundation in database
> design/administration for using PostgreSQL?
> Not interested in getting a job in this field,
> already am self-employed.
>
> Thanks for any assistance!
>
> If an email address is required for response, please
> use superdutyta73@aol.com
>
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