diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml index c167cd9703fdd5b370aebfceebf84a4bb448fcc7..261177c90312e0c6217027df8e5e9809cb1f1e92 100644 --- a/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml +++ b/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml @@ -17,9 +17,19 @@ </para> <para> - <application>pg_upgrade</> works because, though new features are - regularly added to PostgreSQL major releases, the internal data storage - format rarely changes. <application>pg_upgrade</> does its best to + Major PostgreSQL releases regularly add new features that often + change the layout of the system tables, but the internal data storage + format rarely changes. <application>pg_upgrade</> uses this fact + to perform rapid upgrades by creating new system tables and simply + reusing the old user data files. If a future major release ever + changes the data storage format in a way that makes the old data + format unreadable, <application>pg_upgrade</> will not be usable + for such upgrades. (The community will attempt to avoid such + situations.) + </para> + + <para> + <application>pg_upgrade</> does its best to make sure the old and new clusters are binary-compatible, e.g. by checking for compatible compile-time settings, including 32/64-bit binaries. It is important that diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml index 504881d52949ae4b3f5ea33de79ce0ae1e1b6f32..4f59fd19c2b2e2994de40d0ef7ac9bdd183be8e7 100644 --- a/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml +++ b/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml @@ -1692,17 +1692,13 @@ pg_dumpall -p 5432 | psql -d postgres -p 5433 </sect2> <sect2 id="upgrading-methods-other"> - <title>Other data migration methods</title> + <title>Non-Dump Upgrade Methods</title> <para> - The <filename>contrib</> program - <link linkend="pgupgrade"><application>pg_upgrade</application></link> - allows an installation to be migrated in-place from one major - <productname>PostgreSQL</> version to the next. Keep in mind that this - method does not provide any scope for running old and new versions - concurrently. Also, <application>pg_upgrade</application> is much less - battle-tested than <application>pg_dump</application>, so having an - up-to-date backup is strongly recommended in case something goes wrong. + The <link linkend="pgupgrade">pg_upgrade</link> module allows an + installation to be migrated in-place from one major + <productname>PostgreSQL</> version to the next. Upgrades can be + performed in minutes. </para> <para>