Book Review — Instant PostgreSQL Backup and Restore How-to

I recently was fortunate to receive an ePub copy of “Instant PostgreSQL Backup and Restore How-to” from Packt Publishing for review. The topic obviously high on the list of skills any DBA must master. And given my still relatively recent foray into the realm of Postgres from Oracle, quickly getting up to speed on this is certainly a top priority for me.

From the outset, the book does not disappoint. Like any of you, I'm sure, I have a ridiculous number of tech books in my library. This, however, is my first publication from Packt. And I must say, I definitely enjoyed the short, directly to the point format. I'll likely be taking a look at other Packt titles if for no other reason than that.

Author Shaun Thomas had my immediate gratitude and admiration for providing an extremely quick, concise method for creating a reasonably large database to work through the methods presented. Again, as a relative newcomer to Postgres, with no Postgres instances in use at my organization, I found this invaluable.

And without any delay, you will roll right into the basics of backup of your databases. Full, partial, data only, schema info, specific tables... it's all there within the first few pages. In only a few minutes after beginning the book, you have enough information to have a backup of your database underway. Well done.

At the time of this writing, I have not yet made it to the following chapters on more advanced topics. But there is no question I'm looking forward to them given my experience so far.

(And I would add that backup and recovery of Postgres seems immensely easier that what I've experienced with Oracle. The command line tools are outstanding, from what I've seen so far. And as usual, they a much more "Unix-like", for lack of a better term, than what Oracle provides. That is a huge plus, in my opinion.)

I'd highly recommend this book. Its concise coverage of the backup and recovery of Postgres will have you up and running in no time. And who has time to waste when it comes to developing proficiency in anything data related these days.