A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release. If your application examines the system catalogs, additional changes will be required due to the introduction of schemas in 7.3; for more information, see:
http://developer.postgresql.org/~momjian/upgrade_tips_7.3
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Observe the following incompatibilities:
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Pre-6.3 clients are no longer supported.
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pg_hba.conf now has a column for the user name and additional features. Existing files need to be adjusted.
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Several postgresql.conf logging parameters have been renamed.
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LIMIT #,# has been disabled; use LIMIT # OFFSET #.
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INSERT statements with column lists must specify a value for each specified column. For example, INSERT INTO tab (col1, col2) VALUES ('val1') is now invalid. It's still allowed to supply fewer columns than expected if the INSERT does not have a column list.
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serial columns are no longer automatically UNIQUE; thus, an index will not automatically be created.
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A SET command inside an aborted transaction is now rolled back.
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COPY no longer considers missing trailing columns to be null. All columns need to be specified. (However, one may achieve a similar effect by specifying a column list in the COPY command.)
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The data type timestamp is now equivalent to timestamp without time zone, instead of timestamp with time zone.
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Pre-7.3 databases loaded into 7.3 will not have the new object dependencies for serial columns, unique constraints, and foreign keys. See the directory contrib/adddepend/ for a detailed description and a script that will add such dependencies.
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An empty string ('') is no longer allowed as the input into an integer field. Formerly, it was silently interpreted as 0.