Re: Patch for disaster recovery

On Sun, 2005-02-20 at 13:08 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 09:43:11 -0500,
> > Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > >
> > > We regularly have people on IRC who delete data and then want to recover
> > > it.

That is (one of) the purpose(s) of PITR.

> By having the define it makes it easier for us to help them without
> > > them having to add actual C code.
> > >
> > > Does that make sense?
> >
> > You aren't going to get a consistant snapshot if you get back all of the
> > deleted rows. With autovacuum it is going to get harder to do this, because
> > accidentally making large changes in a table is going to trigger a vacuum.
>
> Right, but as far as I remember the vacuum isn't going to reuse the
> rows. Rather, it is just going to mark them for later reuse.
>
> > It seems like the right way to do this is a recovery using the PITR
> > system and putting effort into making that easier is the way to go.
>
> You are assuming someone is running PITR already, which they might not.

I do hope you/we all recommend PITR as the supported route for recovery
situations?? Otherwise it never will get easier.

If PITR were more clearly recommended, then perhaps more people would
think about about using it ahead of time, just like everybody does with
commercial databases.

Best Regards, Simon Riggs