Thread: 8.3.3 stability ?
Time for an upgrade. How stable is 8.3.3 ?
In a nutshell, what does it buy me over 8.2?
On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Gauthier, Dave <dave.gauthier@intel.com> wrote: > Time for an upgrade. How stable is 8.3.3 ? > > In a nutshell, what does it buy me over 8.2? 8.3.3 is as stable as 8.2 in my opinion (been running it in production for a couple months now and there has been no issues with stability whatsoever). 8.3 has much better performance for certain types of workloads, especially with HOT updates, and the more efficient bg writer and vacuuming seems many times faster than it was before. If I was deploying to production today, I'd use 8.3.3 no questions.
On 17/09/2008 18:31, Gauthier, Dave wrote: > Time for an upgrade. How stable is 8.3.3 ? It wouldn't have been released if it wasn't stable... :-) > In a nutshell, what does it buy me over 8.2? Have a look at the release notes, but from memory it gets you a good deal more features and speed. Ray. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland rod@iol.ie Galway Cathedral Recitals: http://www.galwaycathedral.org/recitals ------------------------------------------------------------------
"Scott Marlowe" <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Gauthier, Dave
> <dave.gauthier@intel.com> wrote:
>> Time for an upgrade. How stable is 8.3.3 ?
> If I was deploying to production today, I'd use 8.3.3 no questions.
FWIW, 8.3.4, which is due out Monday, squashes about half a dozen
interesting bugs that are not also present in 8.2.x. I'd venture that
as of 8.3.4 we are about down to the point where 8.3.latest and
8.2.latest are of equivalent reliability. Which is not to say that
8.3.x won't still have some new bugs not present in 8.2.x, but that
I think it'll be about a wash when you consider the problems 8.3 fixes
that are unfixable in 8.2.
regards, tom lane
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote: > 8.3 has much better performance for certain types of workloads, > especially with HOT updates, and the more efficient bg writer and > vacuuming seems many times faster than it was before. > > If I was deploying to production today, I'd use 8.3.3 no questions. Remember 8.3 also gives you the "opportunity" to fix all the sloppy code in your application that depends upon implicit casting. If that's as expensive for you to fix as it is for us, then you won't be moving to 8.3 any time soon.
On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Ben <bench@silentmedia.com> wrote: > On Wed, 17 Sep 2008, Scott Marlowe wrote: > >> 8.3 has much better performance for certain types of workloads, >> especially with HOT updates, and the more efficient bg writer and >> vacuuming seems many times faster than it was before. >> >> If I was deploying to production today, I'd use 8.3.3 no questions. > > Remember 8.3 also gives you the "opportunity" to fix all the sloppy code in > your application that depends upon implicit casting. If that's as expensive > for you to fix as it is for us, then you won't be moving to 8.3 any time > soon. Would you like to have some cheese??? :) Out of 10s of thousands of lines of code, we fixed all the casting problems we had in about two hours. There were about 4 dozen instances we found. And a lot of them were things that needed fixing anyway, like using substring on a date to get a month out of it. Someone changes date style and that goes kaboom anyway.
Gauthier, Dave wrote: > > Time for an upgrade. How stable is 8.3.3 ? > > In a nutshell, what does it buy me over 8.2? > IMHO the biggest new feature other than the usual performance enhancements is full text search integrated into the core. 8.3.3 been in use here in production since it was released, no issues. In my experience it has been rock solid.
On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 16:07 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: > "Scott Marlowe" <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> writes: > > On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Gauthier, Dave > > <dave.gauthier@intel.com> wrote: > >> Time for an upgrade. How stable is 8.3.3 ? > > > If I was deploying to production today, I'd use 8.3.3 no questions. > > FWIW, 8.3.4, which is due out Monday, squashes about half a dozen > interesting bugs that are not also present in 8.2.x. I'd venture that > as of 8.3.4 we are about down to the point where 8.3.latest and > 8.2.latest are of equivalent reliability. Which is not to say that > 8.3.x won't still have some new bugs not present in 8.2.x, but that > I think it'll be about a wash when you consider the problems 8.3 fixes > that are unfixable in 8.2. Reliability is a wide topic. 8.2 reliably works as intended, though 8.3 certainly has better "intentions" as to how things *should* work. I would say that 8.3 has fewer "unintended consequences" for the average user and a ton of benefits: http://www.2ndquadrant.com/download/Postgres_Performance_Update.pdf If your definition of software reliability includes good behavioural characteristics as well as absence of bugs, then 8.3 is a must. -- Simon Riggs www.2ndQuadrant.com PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
Great News. I just requested IS to get the 8.3.3 version. One more question... Is there some sort of migration that I have to do for existing DB's? Is it as drastic as a DB unload/load? Or something simpler? Thanks -----Original Message----- From: Scott Marlowe [mailto:scott.marlowe@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 3:39 PM To: Gauthier, Dave Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [GENERAL] 8.3.3 stability ? On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Gauthier, Dave <dave.gauthier@intel.com> wrote: > Time for an upgrade. How stable is 8.3.3 ? > > In a nutshell, what does it buy me over 8.2? 8.3.3 is as stable as 8.2 in my opinion (been running it in production for a couple months now and there has been no issues with stability whatsoever). 8.3 has much better performance for certain types of workloads, especially with HOT updates, and the more efficient bg writer and vacuuming seems many times faster than it was before. If I was deploying to production today, I'd use 8.3.3 no questions.
On Thursday 18 September 2008 08:42:07 Gauthier, Dave wrote:
> Great News. I just requested IS to get the 8.3.3 version.
> One more question... Is there some sort of migration that I have to
> do for existing DB's? Is it as drastic as a DB unload/load? Or
> something simpler?
>
Upgrading from 8.2.x to 8.3.x will require a dump/restore (or similar
mechanisms), and you'll also want to do a fair amount of testing of your
application code against 8.3 to make sure it doesn't have any issues. Be
aware that 8.3.4 will probably be next week, so you'll want to really move to
that version when you do the actual upgrade.
--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL