-
pg_upgrade> works because, though new features are
- regularly added to PostgreSQL major releases, the internal data storage
- format rarely changes.
pg_upgrade> does its best to
+ Major PostgreSQL releases regularly add new features that often
+ change the layout of the system tables, but the internal data storage
+ format rarely changes.
pg_upgrade> uses this fact
+ to perform rapid upgrades by creating new system tables and simply
+ reusing the old user data files. If a future major release ever
+ changes the data storage format in a way that makes the old data
+ format unreadable,
pg_upgrade> will not be usable
+ for such upgrades. (The community will attempt to avoid such
+ situations.)
+
+
+
pg_upgrade> does its best to
make sure the old and new clusters are binary-compatible, e.g. by
checking for compatible compile-time settings, including 32/64-bit
binaries. It is important that
-
Other data migration methods
+
Non-Dump Upgrade Methods
- The contrib> program
- allows an installation to be migrated in-place from one major
-
PostgreSQL> version to the next. Keep in mind that this
- method does not provide any scope for running old and new versions
- concurrently. Also,
pg_upgrade is much less
- battle-tested than
pg_dump, so having an
- up-to-date backup is strongly recommended in case something goes wrong.
+ The pg_upgrade module allows an
+ installation to be migrated in-place from one major
+
PostgreSQL> version to the next. Upgrades can be
+ performed in minutes.