Re: Pains in upgrading to 8.3

Magnus Hagander wrote:
> Dave Page wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 4:21 PM, Tony Caduto
> > <tony_caduto(at)amsoftwaredesign(dot)com> wrote:
> >> paul rivers wrote:
> >> >>
> >> > Going from 8.2.4 and 8.2.6 to 8.3.0 has been painless for me.
> >> > However, unlike the blogger you cite, I read the directions before,
> >> > not after, attempting it.
> >>
> >>
> >> The blogger has a point about pg_dump and restore, it could be much
> >> better, for example
> >> the backup process could be part of the server core and instead of
> >> having a fat client where most of the process is running on the client,
> >> a API could be
> >> used where the backup is generated on the server and then have options
> >> where it could be left on the server or transferred to the clients PC.
> >
> > Not really an option - the reason it's recommended to use the new
> > pg_dump version with the older server when upgrading is to allow the
> > dump to be made in the way most compatible with the new server,
> > effectively doing some of the upgrade process as part of the dump
> > operation.
>
> For the case of upgrading, it wouldn't work. But there are certainly
> other cases where it would help. Say from your central pgadmin console
> administering 10 servers from 3 different major release trees :-(
>
> It can be done with commandline pg_dump, but it means you have to have
> three different installs on your management or backup or whatever
> machine. Those cases would certainly be easier if you could just call a
> backup API on the server that would feed you the data... (yes, there are
> ways to do it with ssh tunneling and whatever, but that's yet another
> external service that has to be set up and configured)

Using the new pg_dump for dumping older versions during an ugprade is
just inconvenient and something we should not need to do. At the worst
we should have a way for us to upgrade the older version of pg_dump with
whatever functionality we need and just tell people to be running the
most recent minor release before upgrading.

What cases on the past have needed the new pg_dump?

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://postgres.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +