I have a DB with a table called "projects" which has a primary key column called "project". Other child tables are linked in a primary/foreign key relationship to "projects" with "on delete cascade". Each of those may have grandchild tables linked in via other primary/foreign key relationships, all with the "on delete cascade". Etc... . If I delete project "a", it'll cascade delete the children, grandchild, etc... recs. All traces of project "a" will be gone.
But I don't really want to lose the data from project "a", I want to archive it in another DB (same DB server, different DB). The brain-numb method I've been using thus far is to copy the whole DB via pgdump then use that to create the DB "a_archive". Then (here's the wasteful part) basically delete all the projects in "a-archive" EXCEPT for project "a". Then, when that's done, go to the main DB and delete project "a". In effect, I just archived all the data for project "a" and put it in the DB called "a_archive".while relieving the main DB of the project "a" data. But what would be really neat is to leverage that cascade on delete stuff to just pgdump project "a" and use that to create "a_archive".
Can pgdump do something like that ?
Is there a better way to approach this problem of archiving one project (remembering that we do have the "on delete cascade" set up) ?
Thanks in Advance !
Hi,
I think a better way to approach this problem is using "change data capture" using the WAL. Projects such as Debezium [debezium.io] will allow you to process the changes from the server and capture the deletions from tables. You can archive the deleted rows however you like.
