Re: pg_dump: Sorted output, referential integrity

At 12:05 6/12/01 +0100, Christof Petig wrote:
>
>- pg_dump outputs the data unsorted

Not quite correct; it outputs them in an order that is designed to improve
the chances of dependencies being satisfied, and improve the performance of
a full restore (a modified OID order).

> but to manage the data in a version
>control system you need it consistently sorted. So a flag to sort by
>either primary key or left to right would be of great value. (--sorted
>?)

Not really very generalizable when you consider user defined types,
triggers etc.

>- pg_dump outputs referential constraints as 3 triggers (near to two
>different tables) per constraint. A mode which outputs the original
>statement (alter table ... add constraint) would be more sql standard

Abosolutely; with time we are moving pg_dump to use standard SQL.

>So, I'm kindly asking for your opinion regarding this two features.
>Does anybody plan to implement them?

No plans for the first one, but sorting by ('object-type', 'object-name')
would be close to trivial, if there is much interest/support for it.

The second (SQL conformance) is high on my list; a few people (Chris &
Stephen?) have been working hard to implement 'alter table add/etc
constraint'. When this is stable, we will move pg_dump in that direction.
But as of 7.1, there were still wrinkles in the the implementation that
meant it was unsuitable for pg_dump. Not sure about the status in 7.2.

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