Backup and Recovery

I'm new to this list, and Postgresql, and could use some advice from you
experienced users. We are very interested in making postrgresql work for
our project, but its missing one big feature, that is absolutely necessary
for a true OLTP shop.

Even more important that uptime to us, is to never put ourselves in a
position where we could lose data. I understand I can do a hot backup with
pg_dumpall. What we need on top of that is the ability to replay the
transaction logs against the previous database archive. Without such a
feature, even if I did a full backup a few times a day, we would be
vulnerable to losing hours of data (which would not be acceptable to our
users).

I can tell this has been designed to do exactly that, because its really
close. What would be needed is a hook to write the logs to disk/tape, when
they are full (and not overwrite them until they go elsewhere), and, the
ability to actually play back the logs, exactly at the right place, tied to
a specific archive.

I'm sure this is something that would benefit all our lives. Other than
just hiring a consultant to do so, is there some way to make this
happen? Other than eliminating all my single points of failover in the
hardware, is there some other way to solve this problem?

Thanks,
Naomi
--
Naomi Walker
Chief Information Officer
Eldorado Computing, Inc.
602-604-3100 ext 242