>>> we are developing GNUmed, a medical practice management
>>> application running on PostgreSQL (you want your medical
>>> data to be hosted by something reliable, don't you ;-) We
>>> are putting out our first release sometime in the next two
>>> weeks.
>>>
>>> The idea is to name the production database "gnumed0.1" for
>>> version 0.1 (gnumed0.2 etc for upcoming releases). I do
>>> realize the "." may force me to quote the database name in,
>>> say, a CREATE DATABASE call.
>>
>> I doubt you'll have any problems with the tools, but the quoting may
>> prove painful. Why not replace the dot with an underscore? gnumed0_1
> Good suggestion. I will try to find a name that a) makes the
> version tag unambigous and b) does not require quoting.
>
> My main concern, however, was whether the *approach* is
> sound, eg using a separate database name per release or IOW
> version. One way would be to use the database name "gnumed"
> regardless of release, another way would be to use
> "gnumedX_Y" for release X.Y. I wonder whether the latter
> approach has any drawbacks people might think of regarding
> release management etc.
The only thing I can think is that if the changes from v1 to v2 don't
touch the schema, then you've got a lot of extra update-work to do that
really isn't necessary. Doesn't hurt anything though and it gives you a
nice clean way of reverting back a version if necessary.