Re: State of Beta 2 - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Tuesday, September 16, 2003, at 04:51 PM, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
> Just curious here ... but, with all the time you've spent pushing for
> an
> "easy upgrade path", have you looked at the other RDBMSs and how they
> deal
> with upgrades?  I think its going to be a sort of apples-to-oranges
> thing,
> since I imagine that most of the 'big ones' don't change their disk
> formats anymore ...
>

That's probably the thing - they've written the on-disk stuff in stone
by now. DB2 has
a lot of function rebinding to do, but thats probably a different issue.

Tying to my last post, concerning Joshua's offer to put up the labor if
we can put up the dough, given the
fact that Postgres is still in flux, do you think its even possible to
do some sort of in-place upgrade, not knowing
what may come up when you're writing 7.6?

In other words, if we pony up and get something written now, will it
need further development every time an x.y release comes up.

> What I'd be curious about is how badly we compare as far as major
> releases
> are concerned ... I don't believe we've had a x.y.z release yet that
> required a dump/reload (and if so, it was a very very special
> circumstance), but what about x.y releases?  In Oracle's case, i don't
> think they do x.y.z releases, do they?  Only X and x.y?
>

Lord, who knows what they're up to. They do (or did) x.y.z releases
(I'm using 8.1.6), but publicly they're
calling everything 8i,9i,10g yahdah yahdah yahdah.

I certainly will concede that (to me), upgrading Postgres is easier
than Oracle, as I can configure, compile, install,
do an initdb, and generate an entire large DDL in the time it takes the
abysmal Oracle installer to even start. Then try
to install/upgrade it on an 'unsupported' linux, like Slack...but I
don't have to do anything with the data.

To a PHB/PHC (pointy-haired-client), saying 'Oracle' is like giving
them a box of Depends, even though it doesn't save them
from a fire hose. They feel safe.

> K, looking back through that it almost sounds like a ramble ...
> hopefully
> you understand what I'm asking ...
>
> I know when I was at the University, and they dealt with Oracle
> upgrades,
> the guys plan'd for a weekend ...
>
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
>
--------------------

Andrew Rawnsley
President
The Ravensfield Digital Resource Group, Ltd.
(740) 587-0114
www.ravensfield.com