[CentOS-devel] Upgrading postgresql (Re: CentOS/RHEL 5.3)

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, Jeff Johnson wrote:

> On Jan 23, 2009, at 1:42 AM, Hugo van der Kooij wrote:
>
>> > 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?
>> 
>> You windows users: Yes, they woukd
>
> Actually, its "commercial" vs "FLOSS" for the database that is the
> distinguishing attribute determining whether upgrades are simple
> in the above.
>
> Most FLOSS databases, like postgres, are harder to upgrade than
> "commercial" databases like Oracle.

And it will remain that way, until FLOSS developers consider it legitimate 
to wonder why it is that way, and consider how to improve the situation.

>From my point of view, what's egregious with packaged postgresql is that 
it allows you to "upgrade" a postgresql installation to a state where the 
data is no longer accessable. At the least, one should be able to dump the 
data to SQL after upgrade.

There's been much discussion about what rpm can and cannot do. One thing 
rpm can do, however, is to run a pre-script which uses the files of a a 
previously installed version. A pre script could detect an upgrade from 
the old version which uses an incompatible backend format, and could 
then create the SQL dump (starting postmaster and waiting for it if 
required).

I don't buy the arguments that changes in the supported SQL language make 
automated upgrades of the backend data impossible. Dump, upgrade, 
re-import couldn't work if that were the case.

Thanks (over and out).

---
Charlie