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Comment by trippy_biscuits | Hacker News Reader

I especially appreciate PostgreSQL's documentation. I find it easy to locate, search, and understand. I certainly have not had that experience with Oracle docs.

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Oracle's documentation is excellent and is WAY more comprehensive than PostgreSQL. For example, most of PostgreSQL's SQL functions have a single line in a table to describe them, whereas each one in Oracle has it's own section with a full description, examples, etc.

I agree that the relative small size of PostgreSQL documentation and the fact that it fits in a single "book" compared to the many books that comprise the Oracle documentation can make it easier to find something. But can't say I've ever seen a product with as much quality documentation as Oracle.

You can find the documentation for Oracle 12c here: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db121/homepage

As a user, you want to look in "SQL Language Reference" first, followed by "Data Warehousing Guide" (found in a separate folder on the left side). As an administrator, "Concepts" is required reading followed by "Administrator's Guide".

Nice try, Larry.

> Oracle's documentation is excellent and is WAY more comprehensive than PostgreSQL.

I'd generally agree that Oracle's documentation is more extensive than PostgreSQL's in many respects, but Oracle's is also substantially less well organized than PostgreSQL's.

> For example, most of PostgreSQL's SQL functions have a single line in a table to describe them

Reference?

This is probably a good discussion point

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/functions-aggregat...

Not only as an example of "single line in a table" but also as an example where a huge volume would not add much value.

I'm struggling at this time to figure out how to produce multiple pages of boilerplate explaining "min()" that would be any more useful than the table.

On the other hand the explanation about nulls really sucks. Its important enough to put in the single line. For those too lazy to click and read, when a noob thinks he wants "SUM(bunchastuff)" what he probably wants is along the lines of using COALESCE or a homemade function that smells like COALESCE. There is a meta discussion that whenever NULLs are possible, and its more than just table definitions for example an overactive WHERE clause, then the NULLs will be a PITA. Defensive SQL coding can be tedious.

It can also be viewed directly in the 'psql' shell with '\df'.

But it is so annoying to filter out all that branding, marketing slogans and self praise.)

Unfortunately, Oracle's documentation document Oracle's product. That's reason enough to prefer PostgreSQL's documentation.

That was a bit tongue-in-cheek... Oracle makes an exceptionally solid RDBMS and deserves credit for that. It's just that it hurts every time I write VARCHAR2.

I've always found Oracle's database documentation to be reasonably good -- PostgreSQL's is better, but I'd rather be using Oracle's than Microsoft's SQL Server docs.

To be fair, Microsoft's reference material is pretty good - it's standardized, comprehensive and available for every version. You just need to know what to google to find the right page..

Yeah, that's why its bad: the key to the utility of reference material is organization.

PostgreSQL has some of the best documentation i've come across to. Very well organized and comprehensive enough.

Why one would need docs if there are plenty of 100-200$/hours oracle consultants :)

It means you need a $300/hr consultant :)

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