Re: Do you recommend 8.4 or 9.0 for basic usage?

MauMau,

> Could you give me your frank opinions about which of 8.4 or 9.0 you
> recommend to ISVs who embed PostgreSQL?

So, first of all, you posted this question to the wrong list. pgsql-general or pgsql-admin would have been more appropriate for this question.

That being said, I find your statistics on bug fixes interesting, so thank you for collecting them.

However, at this time there have already been four update releases for 9.0, so you can be fairly assured that any major bugs have been fixed. 9.0 was definitely a higher patch release (and longer beta) than 8.4 specifically because of streaming replication & hot standby. Those are major, complex features which offer the opportunity for issues which only occur in multi-server configurations and are thus hard to test for.

Our company has multiple ISV clients who are deploying products built on 9.0.X, and to date have had no special issues.

As an ISV, though, you need to devise a plan whereby you can apply update releases to your client's machines if they are connected to the internet. One of the primary reasons for update releases is closing security holes, which means that you need to have a way to upgrade your customers. Some of the biggest issues we've seen in our clients is that an inability to apply in-the-field updates causing customers to experience bugs which have long been fixed in PostgreSQL releases.

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Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com
San Francisco