Thread: Backing Up Partial Databases

Hi All,

I was wondering whether there was a way to back up partial sets of data as
INSERT statements? Pg_dump seems only to handle whole databases or tables.

I have two identical databases (primary and backup) and I need to transfer a
small portion of missing data from one to the other. Is there an easier way
to do this rather than SELECT-ing the interval then parsing the ouput to
look like INSERT statements?

Regards,

       -Duncan

Duncan McDonald wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I was wondering whether there was a way to back up partial sets of data
> as INSERT statements? Pg_dump seems only to handle whole databases or
> tables.
>
> I have two identical databases (primary and backup) and I need to
> transfer a small portion of missing data from one to the other. Is there
> an easier way to do this rather than SELECT-ing the interval then
> parsing the ouput to look like INSERT statements?
>

I can think of a couple of ways -

COPY (SELECT * FROM myPrimaryTable WHERE id<200) TO '/tmp/myData';

you can then

COPY myBackupTable FROM '/tmp/myData';


Another option is to create a table to hold the selected rows then
SELECT * INTO myTempTable FROM myPrimaryTable WHERE id<200;

then use pg_dump --table=myTempTable > /tmp/myData

the --inserts option of pg_dump will export as INSERT's if that is the
way you want to do it. You will need to do a find and replace on the
INSERT's to change the table name though.


--

Shane Ambler
pgSQL@007Marketing.com

Get Sheeky @ http://Sheeky.Biz

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 04:08:05PM +0930, Shane Ambler wrote:
> >I have two identical databases (primary and backup) and I need to
> >transfer a small portion of missing data from one to the other. Is there
> >an easier way to do this rather than SELECT-ing the interval then
> >parsing the ouput to look like INSERT statements?
> >
>
> I can think of a couple of ways -
>
> COPY (SELECT * FROM myPrimaryTable WHERE id<200) TO '/tmp/myData';

Only in 8.2...

> the --inserts option of pg_dump will export as INSERT's if that is the
> way you want to do it. You will need to do a find and replace on the
> INSERT's to change the table name though.

Though, I don't see any reason you'd want to do that; just stick with
the pg_dump defaults.

Another option is to use dbi_link.
--
Jim Nasby                                            jim@nasby.net
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)