Re: VF0072 - Operating System Compatibility for Application PostgreSQL 8.3

On 09/08/2014 04:48 PM, Bijayalakshmi Swain wrote:

> As part of planning an operating system upgrade for our customer

Which customer? Specifics would be helpful.

> we are
> researching the OS supportability status of one or more of your
> company’s applications.  Unfortunately, we could not locate this
> information on your website.  In order to help our joint customer

I was unaware that PostgreSQL.org had customers, as such. It'd be useful
to have specifics on what exactly you mean.

> make
> the most informed decision regarding the supportability of your
> application in their enterprise, we request your assistance in providing
> support information on your application as per the details below.

It would be much more constructive to send things like this as a link to
a web form that can be simply filled, rather than a long-form email with
no really useful way to enter responses. Though I really think it'd be
more appropriate to seek out an authoritative answer from key people in
the project rather than asking the mailing list.

If you have specific concerns about compatibility with a particular
PostgreSQL release and Windows release, please raise them here, with
specifics.

The distinction between "supported" and "compatible" that you draw in
your mail is largely a false one for PostgreSQL. Supported by whom? The
support provided on -general and -hackers is by the community, for the
community, and is covered in the version policy:

http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/

Different commercial support providers have different policies about
what they support for their customers; you'd need to engage with them
separately.

I would summarise the *compatibility* matrix, such as it is, with
something like:

The community-supported PostgreSQL 8.4 release and newer releases are
compatible with Windows XP / Server 2003 and above. Native x64 builds
are provided from PostgreSQL 9.0 onward, where they're expected to be
compatible with Windows XP x64, but generally only really used or tested
on Windows 7 / Server 2008 and above.

In practice some significant fixes to shared memory handling in 9.0 make
that release and newer preferred options for Windows-based deployments.

The obsolete and unsupported PostgreSQL 8.3 release also works on
Windows XP / 2003. I haven't personally noticed any prominent complaints
about it on Windows 7 or Windows 8, but do not pay close attention to
reports about issues with old PostgreSQL releases on new operating
system releases. 8.3 is no longer automatically tested by the buildfarm,
so issues with new Windows releases will only get noticed if someone
cares enough to complain.



The best thing that you could do to provide more information about
compatibility would be to arrange for the donation of access to machines
for use as build-farm members for automated testing of PostgreSQL on a
wider variety of Windows platforms, as coverage is currently incomplete:

http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_members.pl

Further information about compatibility can be found in the documentation:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/supported-platforms.html

the about page:

http://www.postgresql.org/about/

the version policy:

http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/

the buildfarm:

http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/

and the list of commercial support providers:

http://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_support/

-- Craig Ringer                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services