Unsuccessful database update during upgrade

Hello,

I used the automatic database upgrade proposed in my wordpress 2.7.0 admin, and it got stuck forever in the “updating database” line.

My guess is that the database update will fail when dealing with large databases. Recently, a plugin inflated my database to a size of 20 MB, it certainly has complicated things.

At the present time I’m still busy truncating my database backup in shorter truncks (because reimporting an uncompressed worth 14 MB database, even zipped, will always fail in phpmyadmin, yahoo yay cool great !).

My post has two goals : firstlet it be a warning for everyone with a big database !
And second : can I manually perform the database upgrade without letting wordpress try it himself again ? If that is possible : how ?

Thanks if you can help 🙂

Sabin