Web server address - 610 CHAPTER 26 POSTGRESQL ADMINISTRATION review the
610 CHAPTER 26 POSTGRESQL ADMINISTRATION review the release notes of any releases you intend to upgrade through, but most of the time these revision releases tend to be pretty painless. When upgrading between major and minor releases, say between 7.4.2 and 8.0.2, the process is a little more involved. The differences between a major and minor release are fuzzy, and really are no different for practical purposes when discussing migrating between releases. In either case, it is generally the case that the on-disk format for the database will change between these releases. What this means for you is that, when upgrading between major and minor releases, you need to do so using the pg_dump and pg_restore utilities. If you are performing this on a single machine, it is recommended that you install both versions of PostgreSQL in parallel, so that you may use the newer version of pg_dump against the older version of the database. If for some reason you cannot do this, it is still imperative that you run the old pg_dump against your old database before upgrading, so that you will have a copy of the database to load once the newer version is installed. Once the old database has been backed up, you can install and start the new database, and then restore the data into the new version of the database. When upgrading in this manner, it is wise to run an ANALYZE on the upgraded database to ensure that performance information will be set appropriately. Tip Some replication solutions allow replication between versions and, as such, can be used to migrate between two different releases without having to go through a dump and restore. If you have access to a replication solution and need to avoid the downtime involved in the normal upgrade method, this can be a real lifesaver. Summary This chapter presented numerous different administration options and features that are available to PostgreSQL DBAs. We first looked at the basics of starting and stopping your PostgreSQL server. We then walked through a number of different configuration options that are available to help tune your system. We took a look at tablespaces and discussed how using them could help you manage your disk activity. Finally, we examined a number of different database tasks that are common to PostgreSQL, including running VACUUM and ANALYZE, as well as how to go about upgrading between versions. Armed with this information, you are now fully capable of maintaining your own PostgreSQL installation. The next few chapters enable you to expand upon this knowledge by showing you some of the tools available to help you interact with your PostgreSQL server, and by diving deeper into the features of PostgreSQL.
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