Re: Upgrade in Place

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Naomi Walker wrote:
> We have a very large new customer that is considering using Postgres for
> their RDBMS. The size
> of the database will be in the several terrabytes range, making
> unloading/reloading a time consuming
> and disk-eating process. This customer will be running on a Windows
> platform.

For such a large database, I would give serious thought to not running
on Windows. PostgreSQL has a much longer history on the unix side of the
fence, and a larger *nix community of users and developers. If you're
worried about support, I'm sure Red Hat, Novell or Sun would be more
than happy with the money you'd have spent on Windows licencing. There
are also several well established PostgreSQL consulting companies who
can support both the database and operating-system.

> I've been looking at the upgrade_in_place docs in pgfoundry, but it
> seems it is in the "trying to be
> revived" stage.
>
> Does anyone have newer information about the move towards upgrades-in-place?

Work is ongoing for 8.4 (to allow you to upgrade in-place to 8.5). You
have pretty much full access to all development discussions by checking
the pgsql-hackers mailing list (there's also a developers side to the
website). Search for "WIP" on the hackers list. Bear in mind that
there's no guarantee that *any* feature not yet complete will make it
into 8.4 (although there are a lot of big users who really want this
feature, so it's a strong candidate).

HTH

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd