Re: -f <output file> option for pg_dumpall

On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 14:36 -0500, Neil Conway wrote:
> I don't think they need to be integrated any time soon, but if we were
> to design pg_dump and pg_dumpall from scratch, it seems more logical to
> use a single program

On thinking about this some more, it might be useful to factor much of
pg_dump's logic for reconstructing the state of a database into a shared
library. This would make it relatively easy for developers to plug new
archive formats into the library (in addition to the present 3 archive
formats), or to make use of this functionality in other applications
that want to reconstruct the logical state of a database from the
content of the system catalogs. We could then provide a client app
implemented on top of the library that would provide similar
functionality to pg_dump.

Moving pg_dump's functionality into the backend has been suggested in
the past (and rejected for good reason), but I think this might be a
more practical method for making the pg_dump logic more easily reusable.

(While we're on the subject, this would also present a good opportunity
to make pg_dump's command-line interface a little more sane. I wonder if
pg_dump's syntax has gotten sufficiently complicated that some users
might prefer to specify behavior via a configuration file, rather than a
long string of command-line options.)

-Neil