Re: fine tuned database dump/reload?

Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> Since no one else has mentioned it, there has been discussion this week
> on one of the lists (probably -general or -hackers) about expanding the
> capabilities of pg_dump. I've advocated for allowing a file that
> specifies what objects to dump and what kind of filtering to apply to
> the name. Allowing for only dumping certain rows in a table (applying a
> WHERE clause) would be a neat addition to that.

That would be exactly what I need - the ability to apply a where clause.
  That - and the ability to specify multiple tables to dump, instead of
just one.

Because currently, I still get into foreign key trouble in this scenario:

I drop data (and only data) from database A.  This data has foreign key
constraints.  I want to load this data into database B - where the
tables already exist, they already have foreign keys, and there is some
existing data.

My dump from database A won't load - because the tables were dumped in
the wrong order to satisfy the foreign keys on the reload - so the only
way I can load this data back into an existing database is to dump each
table individually, and reload in the proper order, or manually drop my
foreign keys while I load the data.

Both ways are a pain - and it makes it overly difficult to export/import
chunks of data from a database.

Dan


--
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Daniel Armbrust
Biomedical Informatics
Mayo Clinic Rochester
daniel.armbrust(at)mayo.edu
http://informatics.mayo.edu/