Re: 8.3.0 upgrade, confused by documentation

Tena Sakai wrote:
>
>
>
> I am going from 8.2.4 to 8.3.0.  Does, "For best results,
> however, try to use the pg_dumpall command from PostgreSQL
> 8.3.0" apply to me?  Doesn't this only apply if one is
> already running 8.3.x?  (Even that is a bit strange, since
> the last minor rev number is only 0 at this time...)
>
Yes.  You want to use the 8.3.0 version of pg_dumpall.  The latest
version will understand the dump format required to import into the new
version, and also will understand how to interact with the old version
(8.2.4).  As such, using the new version of pg_dumpall is your best bet
when upgrading.

The old version (8.2.4) of pg_dumpall might not understand some of the
new features, format methods, or optimizations required by the new
version (8.3.0) - so you wouldn't want to restore a dump created with
8.2.4's pg_dumpall on a 8.3.0 server.

Hope that makes sense.  Basically, the new version understands both the
old and new version, but the old version only understands the old and
older versions....  In many situations, you might see that it doesn't
make a difference which version you use, but the reality is that there
might be some special cases, etc. that the old version fails under -
while the new version will not.

Chander
>
>
> Assuming I am wrong (ie., what it says does apply to me),
> where in the steps (after 4 and before 8) do I make the
> backup?
>
> I'd appreciate someone to de-confuse me.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tena Sakai
> tsakai@gallo.ucsf.edu
>
>
>


--
Chander Ganesan
Open Technology Group, Inc.
One Copley Parkway, Suite 210
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919-463-0999/877-258-8987
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