Re: disk format changes

On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Craig Isdahl wrote:

> Hello to Everyone,

What ho

> Why does the on disk format of postgres change between major (not
> sure if that's the right terminology) releases? Benefits?
> Drawbacks?

To implement new features and make improvements to existing ones I would have
thought, although I've only just started looking at the development side.

> As someone new to the "scene" the thought of "dumping" databases,
> running initdb, then restoring the databases is... umm... (looking
> for the right word)... daunting/scary/silly. Especially for
> production dbs.

Some people have had problems but on the whole I wouldn't be afraid. It might
be daunting; just like me reloading a large table with indexes numerous times
recently, daunting but not scary. Plus you can always run up a second DB in
parallel with your older production one for the loading until switch over time,
although to be honest here I haven't worked out why my development snapshot
tries to install the perl modules into the standard place and aborts the
install at that point (pleased I wasn't running with root priviledges at the
time). This also calls into question how one does install a parallel system
when what may be essential items for production and development testing need to
be in the same place.

However, if it's at all worrying and it's not broken I often subscribe to the
don't fix it point of view. I have a FreeBSD box running a way out of date
system but it does it's job. I also have a 486 box with a linux 1.0.26 kernel
but I don't fire that up so much these days. :)

Just my 2 cents.

--
Nigel J. Andrews
Director

---
Logictree Systems Limited
Computer Consultants