Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 12:54:42 -0400
From: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>
To: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Cc: Thorsten =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sch=F6ning?= <tschoening@am-soft.de>,
	"pgsql-admin@postgresql.org" <pgsql-admin@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: upgrade path from PG 8.3 to PG 9.5
Message-ID: <20170321165442.GO9812@tamriel.snowman.net>
References: <58AF1E37.90309@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>
 <CAHw75vtP=FPdVeMZE5bWE6_+Mi0RzyXgr7fEAjDCvBmkkMpdcQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <722763388.20170321172524@am-soft.de>
 <20170321164049.GN9812@tamriel.snowman.net>
 <CAKFQuwbDq=epG8Rph13tRq8rwtg-5NX5NjH7PQPN71RffEGfFQ@mail.gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512;
	protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="hGx25MuB4LWC1yl9"
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: 
 <CAKFQuwbDq=epG8Rph13tRq8rwtg-5NX5NjH7PQPN71RffEGfFQ@mail.gmail.com>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)
Precedence: bulk
Sender: pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org


--hGx25MuB4LWC1yl9
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Greetings,

* David G. Johnston (david.g.johnston@gmail.com) wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 9:40 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
> > * Thorsten Sch=F6ning (tschoening@am-soft.de) wrote:
> > > Guten Tag Keith,
> > > am Donnerstag, 23. Februar 2017 um 18:57 schrieben Sie:
> > >
> > > > You can go directly from 8.3 to 9.5. Just be sure and use the
> > > > pg_dump from 9.5 to generate the dump file from 8.3.
> > >
> > > Is there a specific reason for that? My current approach for upgrades
> > > was dumping the old database using the old pg_dump, uninstalling the
> > > old Postgres, installing the new one and restore from the old dump.
> >
> > Yes.  Using the older pg_dump may result in dumps that can't be restored
> > into the newer version of PG because things like keywords have been
> > added and must now be quoted.  There are possibly other things that have
> > been changed between the old version and the new one which would also
> > require the new pg_dump to be used, but keywords are the big one.

> The proper solution to the keyword/identifier quoting problem is to use
> "--quote-all-identifiers".

Using the version of pg_dump to which you are upgrading is an entirely
supported and 'proper' approach to dealing with that issue.  Using
--quote-all-identifiers, in my opinion anyway, leads to rather ugly
results.

As I also mention, there are other things in newer versions that pg_dump
does its best to address (including things like checking for role names
in older versions starting with "pg_", which is not allowed in 9.6+).
Using the pg_dump from the version of PG to which you are upgrading is
the correct and supported approach to doing upgrades.  Using
--quote-all-identifiers is not.

Thanks!

Stephen

--hGx25MuB4LWC1yl9
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
Content-Description: Digital signature

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1
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=5NQw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--hGx25MuB4LWC1yl9--