Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
> Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:
> > You could argue for some sort of setup where you could take a partition
> > "offline" during which you could safely do things like export or manipulate
> > the data. But that's awfully limiting. What if I want to do things like add
> > columns, or change data types, or any other manipulation that breaks the
> > symmetry with the production partitioned table.
>
> [ scrapes eyebrows off ceiling... ] You don't really expect to be able
> to do that kind of thing to just one partition do you?
Well no. That's exactly why I would want to pull the partition out of the
partitioned table so that I can then do whatever work I need to archive it
without affecting the partitioned table.
Take an analogous situation. I have a huge log file I want to rotate. The
quickest most efficient way to do this would be to move it aside, HUP the
daemon (or whatever else I have to do to get it to open a new file) then gzip
and archive the old log files.
--
greg