Re: QSoC proposal: Rewrite pg_dump and pg_restore

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:09 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>> Here's how I think it needs to look:
>> [ move all the functionality to the backend ]
>
> Of course, after you've done all that work, you've got something that is
> of exactly zero use to its supposed principal use-case, pg_dump. pg_dump
> will still have to support server versions that predate all these fancy
> new dump functions, and that pretty much ensures that most of pg_dump's
> core functionality will still be on the client side. Or, if you try to
> finesse that problem by making sure the new server APIs correspond to
> easily-identified pieces of pg_dump code, you'll probably end up with APIs
> that nobody else wants to use :-(.

It's worse than that. If you put all the logic in the server, then a
dump taken on an older version won't be able to quote keywords added
in the newer version. Go directly to fail.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company