Tutorial feedback

[awan1]

I just went through the tutorial and got the demo working. Some feedback:

• Getting started with a postgres server was by far the most difficult and annoying part. If you have a guide you like to use I think a link would be helpful; if not here's what I had to do:
  • Download and install PostgreSQL
  • Add the binaries my PATH, manually - export PATH=/Library/PostgreSQL/9.6/bin:$PATH
  • Create a database cluster folder somewhere - initdb postgres
  • Start the server: pg_ctl -D postgres start
• Then the Python scripts didn't immediately work:
  • Had to pip install psycopg2, which admittedly is fine but I would've been comforted to see that step called out in the instructions
  • There were difficult-to-debug problems with psycopg2 and libssl.dylib or something, and it took me a while to find that I should do export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/Library/PostgreSQL/9.6/lib.
• The image in step 1 for the MacroBase Exploratory GUI didn't match what eventually worked for me, which was Database URL: localhost, and the table selected from is sensor_data in the image while it should be (and is in the text above it) sensor_data_demo.

Cheers!

[AlexP11223]

Getting started with a postgres server was by far the most difficult and annoying part.

What OS are you using? On Ubuntu (and I guess most of other modern distros) you can just install via package manager (apt-get etc.) and then use postgres psql, createdb and so on. No need to add/start anything manually.

On Windows installer is also enough (it even installs pgadmin GUI).

Had to pip install psycopg2

There is requirements.txt, you can just use pip install -r requirements.txt (also a good idea is to use virtualenv instead of installing globally).