[throwaway10235]

I'm not sure what you mean. I have migrated versions without having to update any applications that connects to it?

Maybe it is a driver specific issue? I have used Python/Java, and haven't updated any of my code or dependencies because of a major Postgre update

[Volundr]

It's not client side, it's server side. The binary format between Postgres major versions is generally not compatible so you need to do a pg_dump from the old database and do a pg_restore into the new one. pg_upgrade [1] can let you bypass this by migrating the binary data directly, but still requires having both the new and old postgres versions installed. There's also things you can do with replication, but since we're talking simplicity I don't think that really applies.

Personally I think upgrades are the one thing MySQL has on Postgres at this point.

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgupgrade.html

[homebrewer]

It requires manual interventions because the upgrade process is basically dump + restore. MySQL and MariaDB upgrade between major versions automatically — you simply install the next version (or change the version tag in your container definition) and restart the server.

Usually it takes almost no time, altought might be just as slow as PG when major changes to the data format are introduced. The only example I can remember is 8.0 when oracle completely rewrote the data format (making things like atomic ddl possible).

[marcosdumay]

The GP is complaining about the need to run the upgrade cluster command, and reconfigure your server when you want to use a different version of postgres itself. MySql does it transparently if you just open the database in the new server.

Of course, lots of people also think it's a feature. But those aren't very vocal. Anyway, this is a main reason why people keep using old postgres versions, they have to think about upgrading, and they often don't.

[panzi]

You need to dump the database on the old PostgreSQL version and then load the dump on the new PostgreSQL version. Some other database servers can just use the old table data or migrate the data files on the fly transparently.