Re: Upgrading from PostgreSQL 7.4.3

The latest PostgreSQL 7.4.x version is 7.4.28. Does that mean I need to do 25 separate updates or does Release 7.4.28 contain all of the prior updates to version 7.4?

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At 06:02 PM 4/14/2010, Tom Lane wrote:
>peter(at)vfemail(dot)net writes:
>> I'm running PostgreSQL version 7.4.3 on a Dell PowerEdge SC400 running FreeBSD 4.10. Fresh SCSI drives were installed in the server a week ago. A variety of Perl, PHP, shell and perhaps other scripts read read from the database, write records to the database, and otherwise shuffle data here, there and everywhere all day, every weekday. Rebuilding the server from ground zero isn't a viable option. I'm clueless what is dependent on anything else. Because the system was built by a number of people over a period of many years, there is no one person who understands the system in its entirety . . . other than when something doesn't work it's a headache.
>
>> Where do I begin the upgrade process?
>
>Well, the first, urgent priority for you is to update in place from
>7.4.3 to 7.4.something-recent. You are missing nearly six years worth
>of bug fixes, some of them quite critical. After that you will want to
>consider updating to a more modern release series, preferably 8.4.x.
>That will require a dump-and-reload, which might be painful depending
>on how large your database is. However the larger pain will be
>application compatibility testing --- you'll need to test all those
>various scripts to see if there are changes needed to work with the
>newer PG version.
>
>There have been some security fixes in the 7.4.x series that changed
>application-visible behavior (because there was no other way to plug
>the security hole). So there is a small chance that you'd need script
>fixes even for an update within 7.4.x --- you'll want to look at the
>release notes to try to gauge whether you'll be affected. I'd say it's
>a lead-pipe cinch that you'll need to fix some things to move up to
>8.4, though...
>
>The release notes are here:
>http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/release.html
>and you should definitely study the relevant pages for whichever
>update you intend to undertake.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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