Why does everyone run ancient Postgres versions?

(neon.tech)

264 points davidgomes | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 21:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source

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yen223 ◴[18 Oct 24 00:45 UTC] No.41875321[source]▶

Databases tend to be "stickier" than other parts of any large software system. Largely because database migrations are costly. You can't just tear down an old database and rebuild a new one, you have to figure out how to move all that data across too.

The consequence is that things in database-land tends to move slower than other types of software. This I think is the major reason why we still use SQL.

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jart ◴[18 Oct 24 00:52 UTC] No.41875368[source]▶

>>41875321 #

Have postgres updates actually been requiring users do migrations? Or is this just a fear that something will go wrong?

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1. magicalhippo ◴[18 Oct 24 04:35 UTC] No.41876371[source]▶

>>41875368 #

From what I can gather, yes[1]:

A dump/reload of the database or use of the pg_upgrade application is required for major upgrades.

Now, seems one can mostly use pg_upgrade, which only rewrites the system tables[2] so is fairly quick. But if on-disk format has changed it seems you're forced to dump and reload.

At work we've mainly been using SQLAnywhere, which would just disable new functionality for databases using old on-disk format. So upgrading major versions has usually been fairly painless and quick.

[1]: https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/

[2]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgupgrade.html

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