Thread: 7.2.3-7.4.2 migration

Hello,

First let me introduce myself as i'm posting for the first time.

I'm a project manager working for a french e-crm company, that is dealing with packaged email managing solutions, both inbound and outbound.

Our technical solutions relies on perl, c++, corba, apache and Postgres 7.2.3.

We were waiting for 7.4.2 to upgrade.  As it is out now, i have some questions to ask.

The point is that we must upgrade our clients database, with loads of data in.

First, is it possible to upgrade directly from 7.2.3 --> 7.4.2 : ie dump the 7.2.3 datas, upgrade to 7.4.2, then restore the 7.2.3 datas?

or shall we do 7.3 upgrade, restore datas, dump, then 7.4 db upgrade, restore datas?

I would then appreciate if anyone can report a similar experience, problems faced and so on..

Thanks a lot by advance

Christophe Musielak

On Thursday 01 April 2004 12:12, Christophe Musielak wrote:
>
> I'm a project manager working for a french e-crm company, that is
> dealing with packaged email managing solutions, both inbound and
> outbound.

Hello Cristophe

> First, is it possible to upgrade directly from 7.2.3 --> 7.4.2 : ie dump
> the 7.2.3 datas, upgrade to 7.4.2, then restore the 7.2.3 datas?
> or shall we do 7.3 upgrade, restore datas, dump, then 7.4 db upgrade,
> restore datas?

I don't think you'd gain anything by doing the upgrade in two steps. The main
thing you'll notice is the introduction of schemas. Check for the use of
'now' as a default value too. Probably worth spending an hour or two
reviewing the release notes in the manual to look for changes.

> I would then appreciate if anyone can report a similar experience,
> problems faced and so on..

I tend to do a schema-only followed by a data-only restore. The main problems
I have are to do with dependencies between objects (function F relies on
table T existing). I use the -l/-L flags on pg_restore to let me manually
reorder the few items with problems.

Once the schema is transferred, I restore the data using the
--use-set-session-authorization and --disable-triggers flags.

Where possible, I try to script any changes I have to make - especially
worthwhile in your case I'd have thought.

HTH
--
  Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd

On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 01:01:21PM +0100, Richard Huxton wrote:
> On Thursday 01 April 2004 12:12, Christophe Musielak wrote:

> > I would then appreciate if anyone can report a similar experience,
> > problems faced and so on..
>
> I tend to do a schema-only followed by a data-only restore. The main problems
> I have are to do with dependencies between objects (function F relies on
> table T existing). I use the -l/-L flags on pg_restore to let me manually
> reorder the few items with problems.

CVS tip's pg_dump orders objects more appropiately than before  - AFAIU
the dump is always correct.  If you have this kind of problem, the new
code could save you some work.  If you use it, make sure you use the
"-X disable-dollar-quoting" switch too, because otherwise the dump won't
be loadable on released versions.

--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>)
"I suspect most samba developers are already technically insane...
Of course, since many of them are Australians, you can't tell." (L. Torvalds)

Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com> writes:
> On Thursday 01 April 2004 12:12, Christophe Musielak wrote:
>> First, is it possible to upgrade directly from 7.2.3 --> 7.4.2 : ie dump
>> the 7.2.3 datas, upgrade to 7.4.2, then restore the 7.2.3 datas?
>> or shall we do 7.3 upgrade, restore datas, dump, then 7.4 db upgrade,
>> restore datas?

> I don't think you'd gain anything by doing the upgrade in two steps.

I agree; that just doubles the work.  One note: you'd be well advised to
execute the dump using 7.4's pg_dump rather than 7.2's.  Later pg_dumps
often fix problems in earlier ones.

> I tend to do a schema-only followed by a data-only restore.

That will slow things down a bit because indexes and foreign keys will
be built/checked incrementally rather than in one go.  What I definitely
*would* recommend is trying a schema-only dump first to check for
problems.  If that loads, drop it again and go for a full dump.  If not,
you can work out a solution without pushing so much data around ...

            regards, tom lane

Thanks for your advices.

Christophe

Le jeu 01/04/2004 à 17:28, Tom Lane a écrit :

Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com> writes:
> On Thursday 01 April 2004 12:12, Christophe Musielak wrote:
>> First, is it possible to upgrade directly from 7.2.3 --> 7.4.2 : ie dump
>> the 7.2.3 datas, upgrade to 7.4.2, then restore the 7.2.3 datas?
>> or shall we do 7.3 upgrade, restore datas, dump, then 7.4 db upgrade,
>> restore datas?

> I don't think you'd gain anything by doing the upgrade in two steps.

I agree; that just doubles the work.  One note: you'd be well advised to
execute the dump using 7.4's pg_dump rather than 7.2's.  Later pg_dumps
often fix problems in earlier ones.

> I tend to do a schema-only followed by a data-only restore.

That will slow things down a bit because indexes and foreign keys will
be built/checked incrementally rather than in one go.  What I definitely
*would* recommend is trying a schema-only dump first to check for
problems.  If that loads, drop it again and go for a full dump.  If not,
you can work out a solution without pushing so much data around ...
		regards, tom lane