We are currently at PG 8.1 and are in the process of upgrading to 8.3.6. I read on your development roadmap page that 8.4 is slated for release in Q1 of this year, possibly on the 31st of March:
“The next release of PostgreSQL is planned to be the 8.4 release. A tentative schedule for this version has a release in the first quarter of 2009.”
I have also read in the postings that the framework for in-place upgrades is being added to 8.4, so the actual upgrade to the forthcoming 8.5 can be done as in-place (without dump/restore), but there won’t be a way to do an in-place upgrade from any 8.3.x version directly to 8.5.
Upgrading some of our larger databases is rather painful and is a several day effort (staging historical data over time so the actual cutover can realistically be done in a weekend). Right now 8.1 is working well for us, is extremely stable, and provides all of the functionality we need to support our applications. Given this, it sounds to me like it makes sense to wait a bit longer (2nd half of this year) for a 8.4.x version do to the dump/restore against for the last time so we can then, in the future, do in-place upgrades from 8.5 onward.
Any comments you can make on this suggestion would be very much appreciated.
