Ignore hype cycles. Let the hype die down, and use tech when it has proven itself. Your run-of-the-mill business doesn't try to stay on the leading edge. When not working in the "startup" world, it becomes a good guideline that if you need to be challenged and informed and parse the hype in order to use a new tech... then you probably should not use it. Boring tech is stable tech.
"just use postgres" should be tattood on every junior engineer right out of college
I don't really get why Postgres is touted as "boring" technology. It's literally the "exciting" SQL server.
Surely you mean MySQL / MariaDB.
With Postgres I literally have to re-read docs every time there is a major version upgrade because I need to remind myself how to dump the database and re-import it into the new version because it's 2025 and Postgres still hasn't come up with a way to not have you do this.
Run your cluster on Debian. Make a backup. Run pg_upgradecluster. In a week, throw away the backup.
(You should be checking for regressions and behavior changes in your app, too, but you always need to do that. Have a QA database.)
I am talking from an end user of an application point of view.
I have _one_ database, not a cluster. I back it up every day anyway.
You're telling me I have to specifically use Debian, and have a cluster, to get a good experience out of Postgres?
Doesn't sound very boring to me.
First, important point: every Postgres DB is in a cluster.
Second, important point: yes, you should use Debian because Debian has consistently provided the upgrade-in-place experience that PG has lacked until.... just now, actually.
Third point that you didn't ask about: you should learn a little about PG tuning, because on day 1, the config is tuned appropriately for your Sun Ultra 5 workstation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_5/10
(I am slightly exaggerating, but you should investigate anyway.)
Okay, I was not familiar with the Postgres specific terminology.
Just for context, I run Postgres on an OpenBSD host (will probably be FreeBSD in the near future) to back an instance of davical which is a caldav server used by a total of two people.
I will keep tuning in mind if I ever actually use Postgres for anything significant but for now it seems like it would probably be wasted effort.
While I'd agree that Debian is boring, it still seems to me that Postgres isn't, even with this in place upgrade tooling. I still have to remember a specific upgrade command special to Postgres.
Try reading what postgres calls a "cluster" (of databases, not of servers): https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/creating-cluster.htm...
Running and using MySQL is so much more trouble and limitations, it's not even funny any longer. I for myself have concluded, if I have the choice, I will never again choose MySQL.
pg_upgrade has worked fine for years now, no need for manual dump/restore
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgupgrade.html
You are right, but it's still a manual step I have to remind myself how to perform every time I upgrade. Thankfully the OpenBSD docs remind me, otherwise I wouldn't remember:
https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade77.html
https://github.com/openbsd/ports/blob/master/databases/postg...