On Sun, 2002-09-29 at 07:19, Lamar Owen wrote: > On Saturday 28 September 2002 09:23 pm, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > Justin Clift wrote: > > > Alvaro Herrera wrote: > > > > I agree with Lamar that upgrading is a very difficult process right > > > > As a "simple for the user approach", would it be > > > too-difficult-to-bother-with to add to the postmaster an ability to > > > start up with the data files from the previous version, for it to > > > recognise an old data format automatically, then for it to do the > > > conversion process of the old data format to the new one before going > > > any further? > > > > Sounds like a pain to create initially, but nifty in the end. > > > Yes, we could, but if we are going to do that, we may as well just > > automate the dump/reload. > > Automating the dump/reload is fraught with pitfalls. Been there; done that; > got the t-shirt. The dump from the old version many times requires > hand-editing for cases where the complexity is above a certain threshold. > The 7.2->7.3 threshold is just a little lower than normal. > > Our whole approach to the system catalog is wrong for what Justin (and many > others would like to see). > > With MySQL, for instance, one can migrate on a table-by-table basis from one > table type to another. As older table types are continuously supported, one > can upgrade each table in turn as you need the featureset supported by that > tabletype.
The initial Postgres design had a notion of StorageManager's, which should make this very easy indeed, if it had been kept working . IIRC the black box nature of storage manager interface was broken at latest when adding WAL (if it had really been there in the first place). ---------------------- Hannu ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly