Thread: Newer frontend talking to older backend

Hi,
    I have a webserver which has to talk to various PostgeSQL backends
(some are 6.3.2 and some 6.4.2). I have the libpg from 6.4.2 on the
webserver and it talks fine to the 6.4.2 backends however I get
`Unsupported frontend protocol` when talking to the 6.3.2 backends.
Is there a way to get libpq to talk the 6.3.2 protocol or is the
only solution to upgrade all the backends to 6.4.2? I thought the
`options` argument in PGconnectdb might do this but it just seems
to be for debugging support.

Any help would be appreciated.

cheers
si
GX Networks Ltd.

Simon Evans <spse@gxn.net> writes:
>     I have a webserver which has to talk to various PostgeSQL backends
> (some are 6.3.2 and some 6.4.2). I have the libpg from 6.4.2 on the
> webserver and it talks fine to the 6.4.2 backends however I get
> `Unsupported frontend protocol` when talking to the 6.3.2 backends.
> Is there a way to get libpq to talk the 6.3.2 protocol or is the
> only solution to upgrade all the backends to 6.4.2?

No go, I'm afraid.  You can put the client back to 6.3.2 and it should
talk to both old and new servers; or you can upgrade all your servers.
But a new client won't talk to old servers.  Sorry.

(My advice would be to upgrade the servers.  6.4 has been notably more
stable in production use for my company than 6.3.2 was ...)

            regards, tom lane