Upgrade considerations v17

The pg_upgrade executable is distributed with EDB Postgres Advanced Server and is installed as part of the Database Server component. You don't need to further install or configure it. The pg_upgrade utility performs an in-place transfer of existing data between EDB Postgres Advanced Server and any later version.

Several factors determine if an in-place upgrade is practical:

• The on-disk representation of user-defined tables must not change between the original version and the upgraded version.
• The on-disk representation of data types must not change between the original version and the upgraded version.
• To upgrade between major versions of EDB Postgres Advanced Server with pg_upgrade, both versions must share a common binary representation for each data type. Therefore, you can't use pg_upgrade to migrate from a 32-bit to a 64-bit Linux platform.

Before performing a version upgrade, pg_upgrade verifies that the old cluster and the new cluster are compatible.

If the upgrade involves a change in the on-disk representation of database objects or data, or if it involves a change in the binary representation of data types, pg_upgrade can't perform the upgrade. To upgrade, you have to pg_dump the old data and then import that data to the new cluster, as described below.

1. Export all of your data using pg_dump.
2. Install the new release.
3. Run initdb to create a new cluster.
4. Import your old data.

If you're using an ODBC, JDBC, OCI, or .NET driver to connect to your database applications and upgrading to a new major version of EDB Postgres Advanced Server, upgrade your driver to the latest version when upgrading EDB Postgres Advanced Server.