I have been looking into the WAL to know if there is any way to read the data contained in it. I know that it stores binary data that is applied directly to the files in the Postgres cluster. I would like to get the "real" data, like it is written in the SQL queries, instead of the binary data.
Are there any projects or standard procedures for reading the data from the WAL to get a change log for the database (or without the WAL, using some other method)? I have searched for information about this quite thoroughly without luck, so I thought I'd try asking here before I started to patch Postgres :)
About the project I'm working on: it's a project for my master thesis at the University of Iceland. I'm trying to build a framework for quick creation of development and testing databases in Postgres. It's still in early stages but the idea is to create the schema first and use views that fetch the data as it is needed. I run a database in the middle of dev and master that stores the history of the data in master, that way I can fetch data for dev using the state of master as it was when dev was created. To that end I need to monitor changes in master, and I would like to read the WAL for that as it requires no changes to the master DB (unlike triggers).