Re: 8.03 versus 8.04

On Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 01:34:19PM -0500, alex(dot)cotarlan(at)thomson(dot)com wrote:
> Can anyone specify from his/her experience what would be the benefits
> of using postgresql 8.04 versus 8.03 in terms of reliability and/or
> performance.

See the 8.0.4 Release Notes for a description of the changes, most
of which concern reliability:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/interactive/release.html#RELEASE-8-0-4

Notice that nearly all items include words like "fix" or "improve
robustness."

> My organizations intends to upgrade one of the servers from 7.3 to
> 8.03 (the version of the secondary server) or to 8.04 which is the
> latest 8.0x. I would tend to chose 8.03 which seems pretty stable so
> far but I would like to hear from other from other people.

Why would you prefer 8.0.3 over 8.0.4? PostgreSQL's point releases
aren't for adding new features but rather for fixing known problems,
so in theory a branch's latest point release should be the best
version in that branch. It's possible that one of the fixes will
introduce a new problem so you have to weigh that unknown against
the known problems that were fixed, but it's not like a new point
release represents new development.

BTW, the developers are talking about making new point releases
next week, so you might want to consider 8.0.5 when it comes out.

If you have a test environment then consider looking at the 8.1
branch. For certain queries you might see a marked improvement in
performance.

--
Michael Fuhr