[Courses] [Postgresql] What is PostgreSQL?

[Cynthia Kiser]

Quoting Peggy Baker <pbaker at dbdes.com>:
> My goal is to learn more about how to talk to postgres using SQL
> statements unmediated by the GUI query-building tools in Access

My first database experience was with Access and even though I haven't
touched it in almost 10 years that GUI still influences how I see ER
diagrams* in my head. One of the things I liked best about it was it
has a good balance between GUI and command line. I learned most of my
initial SQL by creating a query in the GUI and then switching to the
SQL view to see how it was done. (That strategy totally rocks for
creating related queries that use one different table. Rebuilding them
from the GUI view is extremely tedious but copying and editing the SQL
version is quick and easy.)

I also still miss 'first' as one of the group-by column options that
Access has. Does Postgres have something like that? Doesn't look like
it. I'll have to see if any of the new SQL extensions in Oracle now
let me do that. 

* ER diagrams are entity-relationship diagrams, a visual way of
  representing tables and how they interact with eachother.