> Yeah, but the way this have been architected, it's impossible to do a
> backup over the network, i.e. with only the 5432 port at your
> disposal. And that's just one of the _obvious_ drawbacks...the way I
> see it, the way to do it would be to move the dump code into the
> database server. Let _the_server_ do all the hard work and let the
> application on the other end do whatever it wants with the (supposedly
> plain text) dump. That's flexibility, and it wouldn't require
> rewriting the dump utility - just a move into the server itself.
The main reason it's not done so is because pg_dump is working across
server versions. You will want to do the dump using the newer pg_dump,
because it can create SQL which compensates for postgres internal
changes like user/group/role creation syntax and the like.
If you tie the dump software to the server, how will you do a dump of an
old server using the new dump client ?
Cheers,
Csaba.