Re: Move databases from Pg 7.2.1 to 8.3.x

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 09:58 -0700, Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
>> The plan calls for a pg_dump using my workstation using CREATE the
>> database and INSERTS (-C -D) . Then use psql to run the script created
>> above to build the database on the new system.

> You want to install the new version of PostgreSQL and use the version of
> pg_dump that comes with that machine.

Check. In theory the other way should work, but usually the newer
version of pg_dump is a better bet (particularly for such an old version
--- seven more years of bug fixes, eh?)

> Secondly there is no reasons to do -D (which is actually -d btw). Just
> do a stock pg_dumpall.

It might actually be a good idea to use --column-inserts for this.
I don't recall all the details right at the moment, but ISTR there were
some funnies with respect to corner-case COPY data syntax back in the
dim past, and it might be that that includes 7.2. This was a
server-side issue and so just using a newer pg_dump wouldn't fix it.

In any case it'd be a really good idea to see if you can manage a dry
run before doing it live. You can expect some application compatibility
issues across such a large version jump, even after you get past any
difficulties in moving the data. So it'd be smart to do an import into
a test server and see how your apps work against it before you do it
for real.

regards, tom lane