Re: Thoughts on maintaining 7.3

From: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
To: "scott(dot)marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)ihs(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Thoughts on maintaining 7.3
Date: 2003-10-01 17:47:57
Message-ID: 3F7B134D.9030805@commandprompt.com
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>With 7.4 I'm finding upgrading to be easier. I'll likely upgrade out
>production servers to 7.4.0 when it comes out and wind up skipping 7.3
>altogether.
>
>

Sure but I talking about people who are running 7.3 and are happy with
it. The reality is that for probably 95% of the people
out there , there is no reason for 7.4. When you have existing system
that works... why upgrade? That is one of the benefits
of Open Source stuff, we no longer get force into un-needed upgrade cycles.

We use PostgreSQL for everything, and I don't have any inclination to
upgrade to 7.4 except that it is 7.4. I only have two
customers that will see any real benefit from going to 7.4. The rest are
going to stay on 7.3 because they don't want:

A. The downtime
B. Unknown or unexpected problems
C. A brand new database
D. Migration costs

When you deal with the systems I do, the cost to a customer to migrate
to 7.4 would be in the minimum of 10,000-20,000 dollars.
They start to ask why were upgrading with those numbers.

That is not to say that 7.4 is not worth it from a technical sense but
for my customers, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a mantra and
the reality is that 7.3 is not broke in their minds. There is
limitations pg_dump/pg_restore has some issues, having to reindex the
database
(which 7.4 doesn't fix), vacuum (which 7.4 doesn't fix) but my customers
accept them as that.

Your mileage may vary but I can only talk from my experience.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-222-2783 - jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com - http://www.commandprompt.com
The most reliable support for the most reliable Open Source database.

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