Upgrade 7.4 to 8.1 or 8.2?

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On 10/20/06 10:09, John Sidney-Woollett wrote:

We're looking to upgrade from 7.4 - should we go to 8.1.5 or 8.2?

We have two databases; 7.4.6 and 7.4.11 in a master slave config using
Slony. Both databases use the C locale with UTF-8 encoding on unix.

We've dumped and loaded the data into an 8.1.4 database and have seen no
problems with invalid UTF-8 sequences. So we're fairly happy that we can
upgrade to 8.1.5 pretty easily using Slony.

We're really looking for some extra performance right now.

Are the differences between 8.1.5 and 8.2 significant? Is 8.2 more about
speed or new features?

8.2 is not released yet. Can you risk your app on beta software?

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA

Is "common sense" really valid?
For example, it is "common sense" to white-power racists that
whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins
are mud people.
However, that "common sense" is obviously wrong.
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John Sidney-Woollett <johnsw@wardbrook.com> writes:

Are the differences between 8.1.5 and 8.2 significant? Is 8.2 more about
speed or new features?

8.2 is still all about beta testing.

regards, tom lane

No I cannot risk live data...

But I (think I) read that 8.2 was expected to go final in November/December.

So my question was is it worth waiting for 8.2 final or to go with 8.1.5
now. I guess going with 8.1.5 is what we should do.

Thanks

John

Ron Johnson wrote:

Is there a page that describes the new features/improvements between
8.1.5 and 8.2? I couldn't find one on the postgres website.

If there aren't *big* performance gains between 8.1.5 and 8.2 then we'll
go with 8.1.5 and leave the 8.2 upgrade till sometime next summer.

John

Tom Lane wrote:

John,

No I cannot risk live data...

please read closely: Ron wrot "Can you risk your app on beta software?" ..
There is allways a risk included in basing an application on beta software,
as programming interfaces may change.

BUT:
My experience is: you can trust your data to PostgreSQL. The elephant never
forgets. I started developing an application using some obscure FTP-Download
of some obscure 7.x Windows Port. I roled out to pilot users using
PostgreSQL 8.0 beta on Windows. That 8.0 BETA was used by salesmen on
laptops. And not a single byte was lost by PostreSQL.

NO, I do not recommend rolling out with 8.2beta; your way is perfectly
sensible:

I guess going with 8.1.5 is what we should do.

Harald

--
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persuadere et programmare
Harald Armin Massa
Reinsburgstraße 202b
70197 Stuttgart
0173/9409607
-
Python: the only language with more web frameworks than keywords.

John Sidney-Woollett wrote:

Is there a page that describes the new features/improvements between
8.1.5 and 8.2? I couldn't find one on the postgres website.

If there aren't *big* performance gains between 8.1.5 and 8.2 then we'll
go with 8.1.5 and leave the 8.2 upgrade till sometime next summer.

There are a lot of performance improvements.

The release notes are here:

http://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/release-8-2.html

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

Thanks for the link - that was very useful.

John

Alvaro Herrera wrote:

On Fri, 2006-10-20 at 16:09 +0100, John Sidney-Woollett wrote:

We're looking to upgrade from 7.4 - should we go to 8.1.5 or 8.2?

I think the biggest question is whether your deployment can wait for the
stable release of 8.2, including possible delays.

Also, of course, check out the release notes to see if there's anything
you're interested in. If not, probably 8.1 is the way to go because it
will be more stable for some time.

Either way, try out your application on the 8.2 betas. Testing the beta
helps everyone.

Regards,
Jeff Davis

From what I've seen 8.2 is going to offer several nice new features, but
I would move to 8.1.5 for now.

Honestly, I would probably wait until 8.2.1 is available before moving
to that subversion. No offense against the PG team, but I've been
burned by zeroes once too many times to go live with 8.2.0.

--
Brandon Aiken
CS/IT Systems Engineer

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of John
Sidney-Woollett
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 11:10 AM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: [GENERAL] Upgrade 7.4 to 8.1 or 8.2?

We're looking to upgrade from 7.4 - should we go to 8.1.5 or 8.2?

We have two databases; 7.4.6 and 7.4.11 in a master slave config using
Slony. Both databases use the C locale with UTF-8 encoding on unix.

We've dumped and loaded the data into an 8.1.4 database and have seen no

problems with invalid UTF-8 sequences. So we're fairly happy that we can

upgrade to 8.1.5 pretty easily using Slony.

We're really looking for some extra performance right now.

Are the differences between 8.1.5 and 8.2 significant? Is 8.2 more about

speed or new features?

John

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On 10/20/06, John Sidney-Woollett <johnsw@wardbrook.com> wrote:

We're looking to upgrade from 7.4 - should we go to 8.1.5 or 8.2?

We have two databases; 7.4.6 and 7.4.11 in a master slave config using
Slony. Both databases use the C locale with UTF-8 encoding on unix.

We've dumped and loaded the data into an 8.1.4 database and have seen no
problems with invalid UTF-8 sequences. So we're fairly happy that we can
upgrade to 8.1.5 pretty easily using Slony.

We're really looking for some extra performance right now.

Are the differences between 8.1.5 and 8.2 significant? Is 8.2 more about
speed or new features?

I've been developing against 8.2 for months without a single 8.2
specific problem. I run both linux and windows in high load
environments (not so much windows these days tho). I'm going to go
against the grain here and say go for it: yes, it is faster. It's up
to you to determine a test period long enough to build up a trust
level.

possible downsides:
* catalog changes during beta period. (dump/reload to update to 8.2
proper, etc).
* last minute feature change. note recent small change in insert
returning as an example.
* risk of undiscovered bug

ideally, i'd develop/test vs. 8.2 beta, and switch production system
at 8.2 release.

merlin

Thanks for the info. I think that we'll move to 8.1.5 first, and then
8.2 when it's stable. We have to keep our test and production systems in
sync (version-wise).

John

Merlin Moncure wrote: