Re: A quick question on CONTRIB package

ramakrishna(dot)reddy(at)indussoft(dot)com ("Ramakrishna Reddy") writes:
> Thanks for your vauable suggestions.
>
> We have very huge databases in many installations and infact have
> plans for upgrading to latest releases. But as we are not very sure
> about the stability of post 7.2.1 versions, refrained from doing
> that. Could you please suggest me which version is the best in terms
> of stability, performance and minimal bugs. We want to upgrade this
> on both our Windows as well as Linux environments.

Well, there are only three versions worth considering:

1. 7.4.13; 7.4 is still being supported, somewhat. It's now an old
version, where numerous improvements and some fixes have been
applied to later versions that will never be applied to it.

As compared to 8.0 and 8.1 releases, there are quite a lot of
things *missing* in 7.4 that help the subsequent major versions to
provide both better performance and more predictable/stable
performance.

I would *NOT* recommend that you jump to 7.4; that would merely
bring you to having a 2-and-a-half year-old version, lacking the
benefits of 8.0 and 8.1.

2. 8.0.8. This is also being supported. It is an old version, as
8.1 was released about six months ago. Again, fixes and
*numerous* improvements have been applied to 8.1 that will never
be applied to the 8.0 series.

3. 8.1.4. This is the latest release of the latest major version.

As "latest major version," it can be expected to have better
performance than any earlier major version.

There haven't been many reports of bugs that were introduced newly
to this major version, so this version seems reasonably stable
overally.

As the latest release of that major version, it can be expected to
be more stable than any previous release of 8.1. Certainly it may
be expected to have the fewest bugs of any 8.1.x release.

It all seems to point to 8.1.4 being the best candidate.
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