Upgrades - Get them done!
Most developers are afraid of upgrades of software they don’t control. Most are fine with pushing their own changes into production but very few rest easy when it comes time to upgrade the database. They have little to fear with MySQL if they stay on top of it.
Between every release of MySQL A list of changes is published into the manual. For example when upgrading from 4.1.11 to 4.1.12. There is also a set of pages which describe changes between major versions. If you pass these around to your engineers and something is likely to go wrong chances are one of them will spot it. Lots of people make it to this point ok. What they do next is what kills them. Instead of scheduling time to fix the problems in their application so they can upgrade MySQL they put it off and never upgrade. A few more versions are released and suddenly it becomes a big job to upgrade. Next a new minor release of MySQL comes out say 4.0 to 4.1 now the engineers want all the new features of 4.1 (sub queries is big here) but they can’t get them because they are afraid of all the changes between 4.0.15 and 4.0.24 plus the new changes in 4.1 breaking their existing code.
So stay on top of your upgrades. When a new version of MySQL comes out you to can have all the shiny new features with nothing to fear.
June 15th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
You can make things even easier than that:
With a MySQL Network subscription you get an Update Alert Advisor, which you can “tune” to your specific use of MySQL. I.e., it will only notify you if an update contains fixes/changes relevant for your platform or the features you use (such as replication). It’s a very neat filter.
December 9th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
good point and I agree, please help us upgrade our slaves