On 07/03/2014 12:19 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
you do realize, adding/removing or even changing the length of a single line in a block of that pg_dump file will change every block after it as the data will be offset ?
Yes. And I guess this is probably where the conversation should end. I'm used to the capabilities of Mercurial DVCS as well as ZFS snapshots, and was thinking/hoping that this type of capability might exist in a file system. Perhaps it just doesn't belong there.
On 07/03/2014 12:23 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
But, since this is about postgresql, the right way is probably just to set up replication and let it send the changes itself instead of doing frequent dumps.
Whatever we do, we need the ability to create a point-in-time history. We commonly use our archival dumps for audit, testing, and debugging purposes. I don't think PG + WAL provides this type of capability. So at the moment we're down to:
A) run PG on a ZFS partition and snapshot ZFS. B) Keep making dumps (as now) and use lots of disk space. C) Cook something new and magical using diff, rdiff-backup, or related tools.
-Ben