Re: Changing pg_dump default file format

I don't want to hijack this thread any further, but Craig, thanks for your
insight.

-Harold

On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 8:35 PM, Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:

> On 11/08/2013 11:41 AM, Harold Giménez wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com
> > <mailto:craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > (a) Lots of people only upgrade every two, three, or even more major
> > versions. I'm dealing with clients on 8.3, and people still pop up on
> > Stack Overflow with 8.1 sometimes! These people don't ever see the
> > deprecated phase.
> >
> >
> > Interesting that they'd never update their clients either. I guess if
> > that's true
> > there's a mentality of if it ain't broke don't fix it going on here.
>
> I've seen all sorts of combinations of client and server versions in the
> wild. Ancient JDBC, ODBC, etc drivers are also common.
>
> > Would they read change logs before upgrading, or just cross their
> fingers?
> >
> > (b) People routinely ignore cron job output. Even important job
> output.
> > They won't see the messages, and won't act on them if they do until
> > something actually breaks.
> >
> >
> > How common is this?
>
> I couldn't possibly say, I can only go by what I see in communication
> with clients, in private mail, in the mailing lists, and on Stack Overflow.
>
> I do see a couple of different groups:
>
> * People who upgrade casually without looking at release notes etc, then
> wonder why everything just broke. Typically people running PostgreSQL in
> development environments. I'm not too fussed about this group, they do
> it to themselves. On the other hand they're a *big* group (think Ruby on
> Rails developers, etc) and the more of them who whine about how
> PostgreSQL is painful to upgrade and always breaks, the worse it is for
> general uptake of Pg.
>
> * Those who don't upgrade because they don't know or care to. That box
> has been sitting there doing its thing for ages, and until they hit some
> key limitation, trigger an old bug, or finally need to do something
> different they don't realise that life would've been easier if they
> hadn't stayed on 7.1. These folks seem to be the most likely ones to
> unthinkingly upgrade from 7.something-low or 8.x straight to 9.3 without
> reading the release notes then wonder why things don't work, especially
> since they'll tend to do it in a hurry as a knee-jerk to try to fix a
> problem.
>
> * People who want to upgrade but are choked by bureaucracy and change
> management processes that move on a tectonic time scale. They're still
> on 8.something-low because it's just too painful to change. They're the
> ones who'll ask you to backport synchronous replication into 9.0 because
> they're not allowed to upgrade to 9.1/9.2, despite the obvious insanity
> of running custom-patched and rebuilt software instead of a well-tested
> public release. When they upgrade they do it in giant leaps despite the
> pain involved, just because it's so hard to upgrade at all. They're
> likely to plan carefully and do it right.
>
> * People who'd love to upgrade, but have an old database running a 24x7
> mission critical system with enough data that they just can't get a
> dump/reload window, and they're on something older than 8.4 so they
> can't pg_upgrade. When they do upgrade they tend to plan it in detail,
> test carefully first, etc, so again they're pretty OK.
>
>
> In general, people are busy and the database isn't all they care about.
> They probably read the release notes about as well as you read the
> release notes on a new distro upgrade or something else that you care
> moderately about.
>
> If you're doing a major upgrade from an old Pg to a very new one there's
> a lot to take in and a lot of rel notes to read. One of the things that
> might help here is if we had (on the wiki, maybe) a single document that
> kept a running list of compatibility affecting changes and upgrades that
> need special action, along with a recommended upgrade path. That way
> people wouldn't have to read 6 major versions of release notes, get half
> way, and give up.
>
> --
> Craig Ringer http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
> PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services
>