diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml
index c167cd9703f..261177c9031 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/pgupgrade.sgml
@@ -17,9 +17,19 @@
- pg_upgrade> works because, though new features are
- regularly added to PostgreSQL major releases, the internal data storage
- format rarely changes. pg_upgrade> does its best to
+ Major PostgreSQL releases regularly add new features that often
+ change the layout of the system tables, but the internal data storage
+ format rarely changes. pg_upgrade> uses this fact
+ to perform rapid upgrades by creating new system tables and simply
+ reusing the old user data files. If a future major release ever
+ changes the data storage format in a way that makes the old data
+ format unreadable, pg_upgrade> will not be usable
+ for such upgrades. (The community will attempt to avoid such
+ situations.)
+
+
+
+ pg_upgrade> does its best to
make sure the old and new clusters are binary-compatible, e.g. by
checking for compatible compile-time settings, including 32/64-bit
binaries. It is important that
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml
index 504881d5294..4f59fd19c2b 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml
@@ -1692,17 +1692,13 @@ pg_dumpall -p 5432 | psql -d postgres -p 5433
- Other data migration methods
+ Non-Dump Upgrade Methods
- The contrib> program
- pg_upgrade
- allows an installation to be migrated in-place from one major
- PostgreSQL> version to the next. Keep in mind that this
- method does not provide any scope for running old and new versions
- concurrently. Also, pg_upgrade is much less
- battle-tested than pg_dump, so having an
- up-to-date backup is strongly recommended in case something goes wrong.
+ The pg_upgrade module allows an
+ installation to be migrated in-place from one major
+ PostgreSQL> version to the next. Upgrades can be
+ performed in minutes.