On Tue, 2020-09-22 at 14:17 +0000, PG Doc comments form wrote: > In "25.3.3.2. Making An Exclusive Low-Level Backup", you said that "The > exclusive backup method is deprecated and should be avoided. Prior to > PostgreSQL 9.6, this was the only low-level method available, but it is now > recommended that all users upgrade their scripts to use non-exclusive > backups". But in the example in "25.3.6.1. Standalone Hot Backups" you use > the exclusive version of backup command. Is it a mistake or not?
Yes, that's true.
Well, technically it is *correct*. It's just rather silly that we are using the deprecated API in the example.
How about the attached patch?
Perhaps that is too complicated, but I have no idea how to make it simpler.
For this example, can't we just show two sessions. That is, "in a psql, run pg_start_backup(). Then in a different session, copy all the files, and then back in psql run pg_stop_backup()" or such?
This is still just an example of a low level operation, where the recommendation is (and is there iirc) to use a different tool for it already.
Ceterum censeo, we should not deprecate the exclusive backup API.
Well. We should depreciate the way it works now, but we should also provide a *better* way to solve the actual problem. This is not necessarily an API that looks the way the deprecated one looks -- the focus should be on providing a solution to the problem, not to un-deprecate the API.