

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: New Features in Postgres 8.4 - linuxmag
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7306

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nimbix
Too bad that the article completely skips these important new features:

    
    
      - Windowing Functions
      - Common Table Expressions & Recursive Joins
      - Default & Variadic parameters for functions
      - Column Permissions
      - Per-database locale settings
    

But do I like the Daft Punk title. :)

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thesethings
This was a good, technical article that focused on _what's new,_ as
advertised. Does anybody at HN have experiences with VACUUM in Postgres?
(referenced in the article)

~~~
sachmanb
My databases in Postgresql have not exceeded approximately 10GB, so for larger
databases you may want additional information.

With AutoVacuum enabled, and adding "VACUUM FULL" to the end of my nightly
backup routine, I have found Postgresql to be really fast. MySQL has had some
performance updates since I switched, but at the time Postgresql was
performing better for me. I believe MySQL was at the first release of version
5. If there is a performance difference between Microsoft SQL and Postgresql,
I'm not noticing it. I have a lot of experience with Microsoft SQL, and I can
tell you that prefer Postgresql.

~~~
dr_strangelove
You don't need VACUUM FULL. If you have problems with too much disk space used
by your tables, increase the autovacuum frequency.

~~~
sachmanb
Thanks nimbix and dr_strangelove, I'm going to take that out of my backup
routine, but being that I don't like to 'remember to do things' - add it to a
once every three months routine.

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chrisbolt
One thing I've never liked about postgres is that for any major version
upgrade (8.3 -> 8.4) you need to do a full dump and restore of all your data.
How do people handle this?

~~~
nimbix
We do it over the weekend. Or at night. Or both. It's not fun, but we can
handle it once every year and a half.

I considered using Slony replication the last time we were upgrading to copy
data between the databases, but I figured it doesn't make much difference and
did a dump/restore instead.

