Re: best practice transitioning from one datatype to another

Arndt Lehmann schrieb:
> On Jul 16, 8:05 am, t(dot)(dot)(dot)(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us (Tom Lane) wrote:
>> CG <cgg(dot)(dot)(dot)(at)yahoo(dot)com> writes:
>>> While transitioning from 8.1 to 8.4, I need to transition to the internal UUID type in place of the contrib/uniqueidentifier module. I've built the database around uniqueidentifier, so nearly every table has one column of that data type. It's going to be tedious to
>>> ALTER TABLE foo ALTER COLUMN bar SET DATA TYPE uuid;
>>> ...repeat 600 times...
>>> I'll also have to drop and reload the views and the rules on tables. It'll be tedious even if the tables have no data in them.
>>> Can anyone recommend a better/faster way to make the transition?
>> Couldn't you rename the type to uuid in the 8.1 database before you
>> dump?
>>
>> regards, tom lane
>>
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>
> Just an idea - don't know if it works, first try on a test server:
> 1. Dump the complete database into text format (pg_dump --format=t)
> 2. Do a search and replace from "uniqueidentifier" to "uuid"
> 3. Reimport
>
> Best Regards,
> Arndt Lehmann
>
uh - --format=t means tar format. --format=p means plain text ...

Or am I missing something?

$pg_dump --help
Usage:
pg_dump [OPTION]... [DBNAME]

General options:
...
-F, --format=c|t|p output file format (custom, tar, plain text)
...

Cheers

Andy