For Postgres reading material, I'd suggest the Postgres docs themselves: They are through, and easy to find stuff in. (At least for me. I find the MySQL docs horrible.)

Add to that some general database books if you have never worked with databases before. Sorry, I don't have any recommendations for those.

As for benefits: It scales better to large datasets, it has a fuller selection of database features, and it operates very close to the official spec for SQL. (Where MySQL deviates fairly widely from it on occasion. Which can be nice on occasion, but it means you'd be learning bad habits in those cases.)

If you just want to learn, and are really care about 'small, fast, easy', SQLite might also be worth a look. There isn't a smaller database out there, it's still very fast, and it's definitely the easiest to set up. But it has a very different audience. (Although it follows the SQL spec better than MySQL, and has some features MySQL is missing...)

I've also found either of the above much easier to use and install with Perl than MySQL, but that seems to be a fairly local thing. (Although the DBD::Mysql docs have huge 'if it doesn't work' sections...)

In reply to Re^3: MySQL Book and PHP vs Perl by DStaal
in thread MySQL Book and PHP vs Perl by bluethundr

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.