"Peter Childs" <peterachilds@gmail.com> writes:
> On 25/11/2007, Erik Jones <erik@myemma.com> wrote:
>>> Does the pg_dump create this kind of "consistent backups"? Or do I
>>> need to do the backups using another program?
>>
>> Yes, that is exactly what pg_dump does.
>>
> Yes so long as you are using transactions correctly. Ie doing a begin before
> each invoice and a commit afterwards if your not bothering and using auto
> commit you *may* have problems.
I think you need to qualify that a bit more. What you're saying is that
if an application has consistency requirements that are momentarily
violated during multi-statement updates, and it fails to wrap such
updates into a single transaction, then pg_dump could capture one of the
intermediate states. That's true, but it's hardly pg_dump's fault.
If there were a system crash partway through such a sequence, the
consistency requirements would be violated afterwards, too.
regards, tom lane