Re: pg_dump transaction's read-only mode

On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 12:38 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
> * Pavan Deolasee (pavan.deolasee@gmail.com) wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 6:06 PM, Kevin Grittner
>> > That makes sense to me.  The reason I didn't make that change when I
>> > added the serializable special case to pg_dump was that it seemed
>> > like a separate question; I didn't want to complicate an already big
>> > patch with unnecessary changes to non-serializable transactions.
>> >
>>
>> If we agree, should we change that now ?
>
> This is on the next commitfest, so I figure it deserves some comment.
> For my part- I tend to agree that we should have it always use a read
> only transaction.  Perhaps we should update the pg_dump documentation to
> mention this as well though?  Pavan, do you want to put together an
> actual patch?
>

I'd posted actual patch on this thread, but probably linked wrong
message-id in the commitfest page. Will check and correct. Regarding
pg_dump's documentation, I don't have strong views on that. Whether
pg_dump runs as a read-only transaction or not is entirely internal to
its implementation, but then if we make this change, it might be worth
telling users that they can trust that pg_dump will not make any
changes to their database and hence a safe operation to carry out.