Re: Trouble-free vacuum w/concurrent writes? (was "PostgreSQL capabilities")

No, that's now what he said. You can backup the database while it's still
being used (the pg_dmp runs in a transaction) but you still can't vacuum a
database while it's in use. Vacuuming is more along the lines of a defrag,
it updates the indexes and maintains stats.

At 12:16 PM 5/31/00, Ed Loehr wrote:
>Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >
> > > Alex Pilosov wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > http://networkdna.com/database/index.html mentions that PostgreSQL is
> > > > > capable of "Online backup". What does that exactly mean?
> > > >
> > > > It means Postgres can do a reliable backup (a consistent snapshot) of a
> > > > database without shutting down the database.
> > >
> > > Hmmm. My backup procedure, based on earlier discussions in this group,
> > > involves blocking all write-access during a pg_dump. That is effectively
> > > shutting down the database from my perspective. Is there a quicker way
> > > to take a consistent snapshot while still allowing writes?
> >
> > With 6.5 and 7.0, pg_dump grabs a consistent snapshot of the database at
> > the time it starts, and dumps that. No reason to shut out users.
>
>Can other folks confirm that this is no longer a problem? Are people
>successfully vacuuming while allowing full read/write access to the db?
>
>Regards,
>Ed Loehr