Re: Is Diskeeper Automatic Mode safe?

cb wrote:
> My understanding is, before I joined the company, they did an upgrade
> from 7 on Linux to 8 on Windows and got bit by some change in PG that
> broke a bunch of code. After that, they have just refused to budge
> from the 8.0.4 version we are on and know the code works against.
Yes; that's one of the reasons there was a major version number bump
there. That's a completely normal and expected issue to run into. A
similar problem would happen if they tried to upgrade to 8.3 or later
from 8.0--you can expect the app to break due to a large change made in 8.3.

Sounds to me like the app doesn't really work against the version you're
running against now though, from the issues you described. Which brings
us to the PostgreSQL patching philosophy, which they may not be aware
of. Upgrades to later 8.0 releases will contain *nothing* but bug and
security fixes. The basic guideline for changes made as part of the
small version number changes (8.0.1 to 8.0.2 for example) are that the
bug must be more serious than the potential to cause a regression
introduced by messing with things. You shouldn't get anything by going
to 8.0.22 but fixes to real problems. A behavior change that broke code
would be quite unexpected--the primary way you might run into one is by
writing code that expects buggy behavior that then breaks. That's not a
very common situation though, whereas the way they got bit before was
beyond common--as I said, it was expected to happen.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.com