Re: Restiring pg_dump text file

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Scott Mead<scott(dot)lists(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:26 PM, <donghe(at)caltech(dot)edu> wrote:
>>
>> > I've backed up my DB via 'pg_dump dbname' using no options. In order to
>> > restore it via psql, do I first need to drop the db instance and
>> > recreate
>> > it?
>> >
>> > Thanks in advance for your help.
>> >
>> > -Mike
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> yes, you have to drop the original db, then use psql -f to restore it.
>
>   You don't have to drop it, you can create another db by any other name and
> re-run the sql file there.  The only time you have to worry is if you use
> the -C (--create) option to pg_dump.  This would actually issue a 'create
> database' command in the sql dump.  But for you, you can restore to another
> database if you would like.  That being said, if this is production, I would
> be careful to not 'accidentally' run the sql file against the wrong
> database, so for your own sanity, you may want to just drop the db.  But
> there's no *requirement* that you do so.

If you've got the space, an easy trick is to rename the old db to
something else, create a new one in its place and restore to that.