Re: Selling an 8.1 to 8.3 upgrade

On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 12:01 -0500, Josh Trutwin wrote:
> I've been asked to put together a list of reasons to upgrade a db
> from 8.1 to 8.3 and I've looked over the changelog, but they want a
> bullet list of 4-5 top things. I'm curious what others would say the
> most 5 important updates from 8.1 to 8.3 are.

What is the reason that you want to upgrade? Do you have a particular
problem you are trying to solve? Are there improvements for developers
that you think will be beneficial, or are you simply wanting to upgrade
from a 4.5 year old DB platform?

You'll probably have the best luck if you sell it based on pains that
you are facing, improvements that can be made, or money that can be
saved.

> I can say "performance improvevents" but I'm not sure how to sell
> that better other than listing what's in the release notes. I also
> think the autovac was greatly improved in these releases as well? Or
> maybe I'm thinking 8.0 to 8.1?

Are you experiencing performance issues, or do you have reason to
suspect you will? Performance improvements are great if you need them.
It can be a hard sell to business folks though when things are
performing just fine.

> Sorry this is so vague, I'm frustrated with this request as I figured
> just the amount of bug-fixes alone would be adequate reasoning.

Unfortunately, what seems adequate to us technical folks is seldom is to
the business folks.

--
Brad Nicholson 416-673-4106
Database Administrator, Afilias Canada Corp.