Re: Recommended Books etc

Mr. Denney: Allow me to venture some suggestions for the manuals: 1) Make more & better examples which illustrate some of the more powerful or non-obvious ways of using the commands. The current examples are essentially worthless. 2) In my experience, a book purporting to be a "manual" has generally been much more informative overall; most Informix manuals hint at what knowledge is needed, but is not really present, and are more overview manuals aimed at persons who don't know very much and don't wish to become experts, rather than those who really wish to become well-versed in the use of Informix. Indeed, it seems that this feeds the courses which Informix offers, since there appears to be a bit of information which is quite generally useful that one is told/given in the courses, and which would normally be found in a good manual. (This is primarily from the experience of our local Informix system administrator, from looking over his notebook and comparing it with the Informix manual.) 3) Information is only half the battle; getting to it is important, too. The Informix indexes don't address every concept, etc., and so are incomplete, making it harder to find a specific reference. 4) Undocumented functions/features that are generally useful are another weak point. For instance, a local p programmer was told about an Informix function which tells you the names of all known databases (for a given engine, perhaps for a given dbspace), which is obviously useful. Thanks for asking, Steven J. Richardson, Merit Network, Inc. ---(Forwarded from: aland@informix.com, Dated: Mon, 29 Jun 92 21:07:04 EDT)--- Received: from rmy.rmy.emory.edu by um.cc.umich.edu via Internet with TCP; Tue, 30 Jun 92 16:46:25 EDT Received: by rmy.rmy.emory.edu (5.65/Emory_rmy.3.3.7) via MAILPROG id AA21962 ; Tue, 30 Jun 92 16:48:34 -0400 Return-Path: ilist@rmy.emory.edu From: aland@informix.com (Colonel Panic) Message-Id: <1992Jun30.010704.1196@informix.com> Subject: Re: Recommended Books etc Date: 30 Jun 92 01:07:04 GMT Reply-To: aland@informix.com (Colonel Panic) Organization: International Brotherhood of Geeks, Local 619 Sender: informix-list-owner@rmy.emory.edu To: informix-list@rmy.emory.edu X-Informix-List-Id: <news.1463> In article <1992Jun29.115217.29583@bnr.ca> Reg Foulkes writes: >In article <1223@pdxvme.pdx.csd.mot.com> news@pdx.csd.mot.com (News >Administrator) writes: > >>I cannot vouch for books as all I've read are the Informix manuals >>which are as helpfull at times as my kids are when there is yardwork >>to be done :-) > > Ain't that the truth. Why doesn't Informix spend some time and >develop manuals that are coherent and effective. Everytime I need Um, why don't the complainers here give some *specific* indication of what they find unhelpful? Also, are you looking at current versions? -- Alan Denney aland@informix.com {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland "I've always been a hypochondriac. As a little boy, I'd eat my M&Ms one by one with a glass of water." -- Richard Lewis