No catalog upgrade

Question

For us Lightroom enthusiasts I find it ridiculous that we don't have the feature to upgrade our current catalogs to the new v4 format.
Don't treat us as being stupid. We know that we can't downgrade later if we choose not to move up to the new v4 once it gets released.
We know to backup our catalogs prior to upgrading like all good people should and to have backups stored on a secondary device in case of a disaster.
Currently there is no point to me using the new Lightroom 4 and providing feedback if I can't use my current catalogs.
Please fix this clear oversight.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply back so quickly.
Fortunately I've been in the computer industry for over 15 years and have considerable programming experience. Beta should already be a well tested product which is ready for consumer testing where an alpha version requires rigorous testing to fix any gaping holes in the programming whilst release candidate is final bugcheck stage with some minor updates and improvements.
So in theory as long as Adobe is mindful of development lifecycle of programming and maintenance then the Beta should be very stable and the catalog database should have already been thorough tested. Not only that, the catalog database should have been decided upon quite some time ago as part of the scope of the project with minor changes occurring through the development of the software.
I know that bugs do still creep in from time to time but nothing tests systems better than actually running a production database which has over 20,000 photographs, countless modifications and so on. You won't get any better feedback than that.
Adobes' licensing agreements already cover them for any data loss incurred and secondary it's a beta. So data loss is only the fault of the user not maintaining adequate backups. This isn't the responsibility of Adobe and Adobe encourages users to regularly backup their data as part of the programs general operations. So users to ignore such notifications is their own ignorance and is indicative of not a lack of understanding but ignorance. The immortality syndrome comes into play here where the mentality is that it will never happen to them. So no matter what, users will be ignorant until data loss does occur to them and thinking that shielding them from this is in itself ignorant. Education is best and that's what I try to empower people with knowledge. Hell, just put a big disclaimer when you first download the beta, when you install it and when the user is about to upgrade about how important backups are and that it's a beta and how downgrade is not possible unless you have a valid backup prior to the upgrade blah blah blah.
But really only the cutting edge prosumers and pro photographers would be willing to cut their teeth on the latest versions and I'm pretty sure that these beta releases would be speaking straight to the heart of the Lightroom users who understand the risks involved away. So most of this post becomes moot in the end.