Clarification on the release notes of postgresql 12 regarding pg_upgrade - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Marcelo Lacerda
Subject Clarification on the release notes of postgresql 12 regarding pg_upgrade
Date
Msg-id CAPmRTtM5S-uc20MHU2PsMkQDwR0xjULQBuAsMzN1WDBw0aePbg@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: Clarification on the release notes of postgresql 12 regardingpg_upgrade
List pgsql-general
There are a few instances where the release notes seem to indicate that the administrator should use pg_dump to upgrade a database so that improvements on btree can be available.

Here are they:

1.

>In new btree indexes, the maximum index entry length is reduced by eight bytes, to improve handling of duplicate entries (Peter Geoghegan)
  • > This means that a REINDEX operation on an index pg_upgrade'd from a previous release could potentially fail.


  • 2.
>Improve performance and space utilization of btree indexes with many duplicates (Peter Geoghegan, Heikki Linnakangas)
>...
>Indexes pg_upgrade'd from previous releases will not have these benefits.

3.
>Allow multi-column btree indexes to be smaller (Peter Geoghegan, Heikki Linnakangas)
>...
>Indexes pg_upgrade'd from previous releases will not have these benefits.


My questions are:

1. Is this a current limitation of pg_upgrade that will be dealt afterwards?

2. Are we going to see more of such cases were pg_upgrade leaves the database incompatible with newer features.

3. What's the recommendation for administrators with databases that are too large to be upgraded with pg_dump?

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