* Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> > I do like the idea of a generalized answer which just runs a
> > user-provided command on the server but that's always going to require
> > superuser privileges.
>
> The design that was being kicked around allowed pipes to be used on the
> client side too, ie \copy foo to '| gzip ...'. That form would not
> require any special privileges, and might be thought preferable for
> another reason too: it offloads the work from the server.
It's a different use-case which, imv, is really already trivially
covered:
psql -c 'COPY foo TO STDOUT;' | gzip > myfile.gz
While there is no option currently for having the server do the
compression before sending the data over the wire.
Thanks,
Stephen