Joshua Kramer wrote:
I consider that a major upstream bug. Better would be for postgresql to ship a standalone SQL dumper, which can read old file formats.
Charlie,
Would you expect a "simple" upgrade of Oracle 10i to Oracle 11, for your major enterprise application? Or, MS-SQL 2005 to MS-SQL 2008?
Any major database version upgrade requires the attention of a qualified DBA who knows how to test data and applications against the new DB version, and then dump/upgrade/restore.
I used to work for SPL (Australia), in the early 80s. We were the Australian agent for Software AG, and sold and supported ADABAS and related software in Australian (and I think) NZ.
When our clients upgraded from 3.2.x to 4.1.x the index structures changed (as you might expect, with improved algorithms and maybe increased capacity), but the data on disk was unaffected. In principle, going back or forward required no more than rebuilding indexes (and, of course, the attendant maintenance procedures etc).
For example, PostgreSQL introduced some minor syntactical differences with 8.3. If your application uses the features affected by these changes, it would be impossible to simply 'dump/restore' without some massaging of the data and the application.
PostgreSQL does ship with a dumper, pg_dump. If you have the current
The previous writer said "stand alone." That is not.