>>>>> "RJ" == Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
RJ> On Thu, 2003-09-04 at 15:40, Doug McNaught wrote: >> Bjørn T Johansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> > Should one use pg_dumpall to backup the database or is it more practical >> > to just copy the data directory? >> >> The data directory will not be consistent unless the server is >> stopped. pg_dumpall works well, produces a consistent backup and is >> easily portable to a different machine architecture if need be. RJ> And it's smaller than the data/ directory, especially when "-F c" RJ> option is used. That and indexes are represented as a single "CREATE INDEX" statement, rather than possibly gigabytes of data ;-) I had one index which I just realized was redundant to another and deleting it saved me ~1Gb on disk. For the curious, the indexes were like this: PRIMARY KEY (a,b); INDEX a ON mytable (a); The query planner shows slightly longer plans with just the PK, but the cost savings on mass inserts which happen often offset this immensely, not to mention 1Gb of disk which never needs to be read into the buffers ;-) -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Vivek Khera, Ph.D. Khera Communications, Inc. Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rockville, MD +1-240-453-8497 AIM: vivekkhera Y!: vivek_khera http://www.khera.org/~vivek/ ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
