Re: Long term database archival

On Thu, 2006-07-06 at 20:57, Karl O. Pinc wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What is the best pg_dump format for long-term database
> archival? That is, what format is most likely to
> be able to be restored into a future PostgreSQL
> cluster.

> Should we want to restore a 20 year old backup
> nobody's going to want to be messing around with
> decoding a "custom" format dump if it does not
> just load all by itself.

Karl, I would say that if you really want data from 20 years ago, keep
it in the custom format, along with a set of the sources of postgres
which created the dump. then in 20 years when you'll need it, you'll
compile the sources and load the data in the original postgres
version... of course you might need to also keep an image of the current
OS and the hardware you're running on if you really want to be sure it
will work in 20 years :-)

Cheers,
Csaba.