Re: Upgrading from 7.2.1 to 8.x

"Chris Hoover" <revoohc(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> I have an ancient database that is running Postgresql 7.2.1 on AIX. Is it
> safe to directly upgrade the database to 8.1? If not, what steps do I need
> to take?

That's a big jump. You'll want to set up a test installation and do
some compatibility testing --- it seems quite likely to me that you'll
find a few things that need adjustment in your client apps and/or
SQL schema.

Why are you intending to migrate to 8.1 and not 8.2?

> Also, I know there are a ton of fixes/improvements from 7.2, but are there
> any major data losing bugs in this version that I can use as added pressure
> on management?

Egad, man. 7.2 was abandoned years ago because of unfixable bugs...
As a first approximation, you could suppose that every major bug
we've fixed in 7.3 since 7.3.10 is also in 7.2. And should I point
out that several data-loss bugs were fixed post-7.2.1 before we
abandoned that branch? If there's any valuable data in that DB,
to still be running 7.2.1 is lawsuit-worthy negligence. Trawl the
release notes here:
http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/release.html

regards, tom lane