[luoc]

Last time I worked with Odoo (v15/v16, enterprise, self hosted) we had to send a dump of the production database over to you to be migrated to the new version and then it was sent back. The upgrade path for third-party and custom addons was not defined. And since it is Odoo, everything is in that database: from employee's time tracking to customer support chats, from stock info to accounting data, from e-mail addresses to password hashes. I found this inacceptable but at that point we had no choice.

What's the state here?

[pinky07]

You can crypt the data before sending to the upgrade platform. Before it was an external script, and since Odoo 16 you can use the `oboo-bin obfuscate` command, before running the upgrade script.

See `./odoo-bin obfuscate --help` to check how to crypt your custom data and uncrypt after upgrade.

It's not perfect (crypt specific columns rather than full DB) but, unfortunatelly, to operate our upgrade service, we need access to the database. Upgrades are complex and requires testing, fine tuning scripts to your specific use cases, etc.

The other alternative is to not use our services, but do it yourself using upgrade scripts from the community: https://github.com/OCA/OpenUpgrade

[mavvvricks]

Small partner here who absolutely love Odoo for what it is and you can make it to be.

But - I can't wrap my head around why an on-prem customer cannot be allowed to run the upgrade scripts on-prem.

I have almost lost customers to it, and it's a super big headache delaying the upgrade process for both political and technical reasons.

Having tried to discuss the options and reasons with both Odoo support and employees at OXP has been an almost Kafkaesque experience.

Please explain to me like I am 5 years old.