[comp.databases] INGRES books

robf@squid.rtech.com (Robert Fair) (08/10/89)

>>From: nancy@statware.UUCP (Nancy Laurence)
>
>This is my first time posting on the net, so I hope I don't make
>any major etiquette blunders :-).  I've been following
>comp.databases for about a month now, and know their are alot of
>Ingres gurus out there.  I could use some help, if anyone knows of
>some good, easy to use, Ingres documentation or references books, it
>would sure help to lower my learning curving.  Thanks in advance!!!
>
Since there have been several requests similar to this recently, I'm posting
this to the net.

The following books should give a good overview of  INGRES:

- A Guide to INGRES, C.J.Date.
  A general intoduction to INGRES, written  in Date's usual style. It
  tends to have an emphasis on SQL and QUEL, but covers all the other
  INGRES subsystems as well.

- Tools for Building an Information Architecture, Carl Malamud
  This looks at INGRES from the point of application development,
  and also includes some of the brand new INGRES interfaces:
  - CASE tools
  - the Simplify interface for Suns
  - POSTGRES and PICASSO [The new generation of research DBMS products]

- The INGRES Papers, Stonebraker et al.
  This is a collection of papers discussing the history and development
  of INGRES from the first UCB version to the development of the RTI
  commercial INGRES. The latter part of the book also has a number of
  papers describing research extensions to INGRES, which some people 
  may find interesting.

- The INGRES documentation, which is currently being re-written and
  made more user-friendly by RTI (yes, we do listen to our customers!)
  In particular checkout "Introducing INGRES for the UNIX & VMS operating
  systems" which gives a good introduction to first-time users of INGRES.

For INGRES-specific training RTI sells several PC-based "self-teach"
courses that cover things like SQL, the frontends in various levels
of detail. Also one of the RTI introductory classes can often be helpful
in getting the basic concepts down before diving into the documentation.
(not a commercial - simply a suggestion)

Robert Fair
Technical Support
Relation Technology, Inc