On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 3:40 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Admittedly, this is no different than what happens when you try to back
> up a sparsely-stored Unix file, at least with simpler backup tools.
> But it seems to me we should try a bit harder.
Fwiw both GNU tar and GNU cp support creating sparse files. They do it
by just detecting blocks of NULs and skipping over them. pg_restore
could do that today without any API changes.
That said, an API to save pg_dump the time and space of reading the
fake zeros out of the database dosen't sonud like a bad thing.
--
greg