Re: Blob fields and backups

On Nov 30, 2006, at 5:15 AM, william.munoz@multiservicios.gov.co wrote:
> I have an Oracle DB, where my backup file is 280 GB and growing. I
> also have a
> lot of blob fields there. When i make a backup recover, the blob
> fields are
> there, and my boss is alive.
>
> I want to know how postgresql's backup utilities deal with blob
> fields...

Most people that deal with binary data in PostgreSQL use bytea, which
to PostgreSQL is JustAnotherField. It'll dump and restore just fine.
The one downside is that a lot of binary values get escaped into
octal, ie '\000', which adds a lot of size to the dump. Though, the
custom dump type might get around that. I think that support for
large objects (which are more akin to Oracle blobs/clobs) is in
pg_dump as well, but I've never actually used them.

Ultimately, if you've got a 300G database, you probably don't want to
be using pg_dump anyway; instead use Point In Time Recovery.
--
Jim Nasby                                            jim@nasby.net
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)