Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> I once considered implementing this myself but found it infeasible for
> some reason I don't remember. Nevertheless I always thought that
> having an atomic restore ought to be a non-optional feature. Are there
> situations where one would not want to use it?
Absolutely. As a nontrivial example, I *very* often load dumps sent to
me by other people which are full of GRANT/REVOKE commands referencing
users that don't exist in my installation. Since, most of the time,
I don't particularly care about the ownership/privileges of the tables
involved, having to create those users would just be a PITA.
More generally, the pg_dump output has always been designed around the
assumption that failed commands are non-fatal. Look at all those
unportable SET commands that we don't give you an option to omit.
regards, tom lane