Re: Immodest Proposal: pg_catalog.pg_ddl

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> What I would like to see is some builtin functions that give me the
> table's DDL, just as pg_dump does. Extra nice would be complementary
> functions that also give me skeleton select statements for each table or
> view.

Yeah, what I first thought David was proposing was a consolidated view
similar to pg_indexes, that could give you an up-to-date DDL definition
for anything in the system. This has been proposed in the past as a way
to migrate pg_dump functionality into the backend. I don't think it
will actually work for that (pg_dump needs more understanding of what
it's doing than just blindly copying complete CREATE commands) --- but
it still seems potentially useful for manual operations.

regards, tom lane