As a summary: The error from apm__get_value is not related to broken upgrades, the same error existed as well at openacs.org. The reason, why we do not see more complaints about this basic functionality (retrieving a package parameter) is that this SQL function is only seldomly called (e.g. parameter::get uses its own sql statements). In the future, we should either drop the function or use and extend it (currently there is no support for global package parameters from the sql functions).
