Re: QSoC proposal: Rewrite pg_dump and pg_restore

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:09 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Craig Ringer <craig@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
>> Here's how I think it needs to look:
>> [ move all the functionality to the backend ]
>
> Of course, after you've done all that work, you've got something that is
> of exactly zero use to its supposed principal use-case, pg_dump.  pg_dump
> will still have to support server versions that predate all these fancy
> new dump functions, and that pretty much ensures that most of pg_dump's
> core functionality will still be on the client side.  Or, if you try to
> finesse that problem by making sure the new server APIs correspond to
> easily-identified pieces of pg_dump code, you'll probably end up with APIs
> that nobody else wants to use :-(.

It's worse than that.  If you put all the logic in the server, then a
dump taken on an older version won't be able to quote keywords added
in the newer version.  Go directly to fail.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company