Re: minimizing downtime when upgrading

In response to snacktime <snacktime(at)gmail(dot)com>:

> On 6/16/06, Richard Huxton <dev(at)archonet(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > The other option would be to run replication, e.g. slony to migrate from
> > one version to another. I've done it and it works fine, but it will mean
> > slony adding its own tables to each database. I'd still do it one
> > merchant at a time, but that should reduce your downtime to seconds.
>
> I'll have to take another look at slony, it's been a while. Our
> database structure is a bit non standard. Being a payment gateway, we
> are required to have a separation of data between merchants, which
> means not mixing data from different merchants in the same table.
> So what we do is every user has their own schema, with their own set
> of tables. Yes I know that's not considered the best practice design
> wise, but separate databases would have caused even more issues, and
> as it turns out there are some advantages to the separate schema
> approach that we never thought of. Last time I looked at slony you
> have to configure it for each individual table you want replicated.
> We have around 50,000 tables, and more are added on a daily basis.

We've got a script here that takes a pg_dump and automatically generates
a slony config that adds all tables and sequences. I've got to check with
the Powers That Be, but i suspect we'll be opening up the code.

Does this duplicate any work that anyone else is doing?

--
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.

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