Zeugswetter Andreas SB <ZeugswetterA(at)wien(dot)spardat(dot)at> writes:
> pipes can:
> compress, split output, write to storage managers, stripe output,
> .....
Right, the thing we *really* want is to preserve the fact that pg_dump
can write its output to a pipeline ... and that a restore can read from
one. If you can improve performance when you find you do have a
seekable source/destination file, fine, but the utilities must NOT
require it.
> I guess we would want two formats, one for pipe, and one for a standard
> directory.
At the risk of becoming tiresome, "tar" format is eminently pipeable...
regards, tom lane