Glen Barber <glen(dot)j(dot)barber(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> When schema/data are separated, is the restore treated as INSERTs?
No, but you'll still get killed on performance by other factors,
particularly incremental index building and retail foreign key checks.
I recommend a close read of
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/populate.html
What you'll want to do is separate the load into three phases
corresponding to the order that a combined schema+data dump
does it.
regards, tom lane