For the most up to date version of this document, please also see

  http://gmod.org/wiki/Updating_Chado

As of Chado version 1.2, the Chado software distribution comes with a tool
to upgrade the Chado schema from an old version (1.0 or newer) to a new one. 
This tool, gmod_update_chado.pl, will get installed with other scripts when you 
execute "make install" and depends on another tool, gmod_chado_properties.pl,
which determines the version of the current Chado database and is also
installed when you install Chado.

Since this is a new tool, I strongly suggest you back up your database before
trying to upgrade via this method!  You have been warned! :-)

To use the updater, you can start the installation like you normally would:

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make install

and then, rather than doing the next step (make load_schema) which would wipe
out the current database, do

  make update

which will (hopefully) do the updating for you.  Note that if you modified
the schema after you installed Chado the last time, this update may fail.
Please watch the output from the PostgreSQL server to look for "ERROR" 
statements.

If you experience problems with this updating protocol, please send comments,
questions and issue reports to gmod-schema@lists.sourceforge.net.

