Re: Standby servers and incrementally updated backups

On Mon, 2007-06-25 at 13:42 -0500, Erik Jones wrote:

> It is my understanding that once a standby server has reached the
> point where it is often waiting for wal files to replay, it is pretty
> much caught up to the primary server, with the differences being in
> whatever wal files are currently in queue to be archived by the
> primary.

Yes. You can tell by using

select pg_xlogfile_name(pg_current_xlog_location());

to see what the current file on the Primary is.

> If I'm correct, then for large databases wherein it can
> take hours to take a base backup, is there anything to be gained by
> using incrementally updated backups?

If you are certain there are parts of the database not touched at all
between backups. The only real way to be sure is to take file level
checksums, or you can trust file dates. Many backup solutions can do
this for you.

--
Simon Riggs
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com