"Mike Rogers" <temp6453@hotmail.com> writes:
> The problem is that whether the database is remote or local [i have tried
> running it on the DB server itself with the same result], it takes up a good
> half gigabyte of RAM for the course of the dump. Why does it load all of
> this into memory on the client machine rather than output it as it comes in.
Use a more recent pg_dump. This is fixed in 7.2.
regards, tom lane
