Backup and Restore

Okay, I'll admit it. A few years ago I lost two months' worth of development work when my hard drive crashed. I had not backed up my source code. That was a painful lesson. Fortunately, software is always better the second time you create it. That is not true for most data. Imagine losing two months' worth of customer transactions.

Database backups are critically important. Some types of data can be recreated, but it's usually easier to load an archive tape than to remanufacture lost data.

You may already have a backup plan in place for archiving filesystem data. That may not be a good solution for backing up data hosted in a PostgreSQL database. For one thing, you must shut down the database server if you choose to archive the filesystem.

PostgreSQL provides a set of utilities that you can use to archive and restore individual tables or entire databases. You can use these utilities on a live server (that is, you don't have to shut down the database first). Using the pg_dump and pg_dumpall utilities, you can also compress archive data on-the-fly.

Chapter 21 shows you how to use the pg_dump and pg_dumpall utilities and how to recover data from an archive.

Time for another confession. Not too long ago, I needed to recover some code from an archive that had been created the previous night. (Yes, I did something stupid, and the easiest way to undo it was to restore from backup.) I was surprised to find that, even though an archive had been made the previous night, I could not read from the tape because I had been using the wrong commands to create the archives. It's not enough to have a good backup plantest your restore procedures as well.

Part I: General PostgreSQL Use

Introduction to PostgreSQL and SQL

Working with Data in PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL SQL Syntax and Use

Performance

Part II: Programming with PostgreSQL

Introduction to PostgreSQL Programming

Extending PostgreSQL

PL/pgSQL

The PostgreSQL C APIlibpq

A Simpler C APIlibpgeasy

The New PostgreSQL C++ APIlibpqxx

Embedding SQL Commands in C Programsecpg

Using PostgreSQL from an ODBC Client Application

Using PostgreSQL from a Java Client Application

Using PostgreSQL with Perl

Using PostgreSQL with PHP

Using PostgreSQL with Tcl and Tcl/Tk

Using PostgreSQL with Python

Npgsql: The .NET Data Provider

Other Useful Programming Tools

Part III: PostgreSQL Administration

Introduction to PostgreSQL Administration

PostgreSQL Administration

Internationalization and Localization

Security

Replicating PostgreSQL Data with Slony

Contributed Modules

Index



PostgreSQL(c) The comprehensive guide to building, programming, and administering PostgreSQL databases
PostgreSQL(c) The comprehensive guide to building, programming, and administering PostgreSQL databases
ISBN: 735712573
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 261

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