DBMS's

[Daniel Pittman]

"Gerald I. Evenden" <geraldi.evenden at gmail.com> writes:

> What a headache I got into with what I thought was a pretty simple
> installation of a relational database: in this case sr19 from USDA
> with a thorough documentation and clear layout of the tables. Piece of
> cake.
>
> Since MySQL was on my system and I was using it for some flat-file
> storage of personal information it was my first choice.
>
> After banging my head for three days I could not get MySQL to join two
> tables properly (it misses every other row on the second table).

Ah, MySQL.  My favorite database. ;)

[...]

> Lastly, I decided to install Postgresql. The list of software for this
> system is mindboggling and seemingly impossible to figure which files
> one needs to install. 

You can generally use the 'recommends' and 'suggests' of a package as a
good guide there.

> At the moment, postmaster seems to be running BUT I can't find the
> 'initdb' (other than a copy in cygwin/bin ---not linux). And I am
> still in the "setup" phase, thrashing around. Interestingly, the man
> file for initdb is installed but where is the f_____g program?

...I don't think you really want to do that.

Ubuntu packages generally go out of their way to "just work" out of the
box.  In this case that means that they created the default database
cluster for you when installed.

You should be able to simply create PostgreSQL users, databases and run
from there -- nothing more to do.  No need to create your own cluster or
anything exciting like that.


> My question is: is it better to try and resolve the MySQL join problem
> or find some instructions/procedures to complete the Postgresql
> installation?

Well, did you look at the documentation that ships with the PostgreSQL
package?  Take a look at the 'README.Debian' in
/usr/share/doc/postgresql-7.2 (or whatever version you installed).

As a general rule of thumb you will find relevant information in the
Debian distribution README file in the package documentation.

That has a "quick start" guide for the impatient as well as pointers to
the appropriate documentation, etc.

Regards,
        Daniel
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