Comment by icey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icey | Hacker News Reader

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Can't write it well.

People have a tough time thinking in sets. This applies to developers as well. This is why people constantly fight the relational paradigm; you end up with things like CouchDB or OODBs because they make more sense to developers. It's easier to reason about an object than it is about a set of data.

I've been working on writing a bunch of "SQL from the ground up" postings, but I keep getting side-tracked with another project I'm working on and I haven't had a blog in years to post it on. Besides that, 99% of all the SQL work I've done has been in Sybase, MS-SQL and Oracle; so I'm not sure how relevant T-SQL & PL/SQL are to MySQL or Postgres. I'm assuming the basics are all the same though (which is to say ANSI compliant).

http://database-programmer.blogspot.com/2008/09/comprehensiv...

What an amazing resource. I've been working with some developers on their SQL recently, and I'll be sure to send this on to them.

You will likely find PostgreSQL extremely easy to learn. You will probably find MySQL to be very frustrating.

Why is it that every time a database gets mentioned it turns into PostgreSQL vs MySQL ?

I've worked with both, they both have their learning curve, whatever you already know is going to be 'easier' to you because you don't have to unlearn any habits, I wouldn't advice anybody to use either until I know more of the intended application.

He specifically mentions having experience with Oracle. This will make PostgreSQL easier to learn.

Ok, I see. Oracle's implementation of SQL being closer to MySQL's would be the reason then I assume, I don't have any Oracle experience.

Yes, but the other way around (Oracle's implementation of SQL lines up closer to Postgres). Also, Postgres has a procedural language based off Oracle's PL/SQL language called plpgsql, so if you have experience in one, learning the other is pretty simple.

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