Emmanuel Charpentier <charpent(at)bacbuc(dot)dyndns(dot)org> writes:
> However, this does *not* work between a 7.3-generated dump and a 7.2
> production server. The archiver complaints of an 'unknown archive format :
> "0"' (I'm quoting this from the top of my head : my production server is
> not reachable from the place I'm writing this).
In general, dumps from newer versions make use of SQL features that are
not in older versions; so it's more or less hopeless to expect backwards
compatibility of dumps. I'm not sure why pg_dump's archive header
format changed, but even without that you'd be facing SQL-level
compatibility issues.
You could perhaps have some success by dumping as a text-format dump
(not -Fc or -Ft) and then editing the resulting file to dumb the SQL
down to 7.2's level.
regards, tom lane