Re: Further cleanup of pg_dump/pg_restore item selection code

On Wednesday, January 24, 2018, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
>
> This does not go all the way towards making pg_restore's item selection
> switches dump subsidiary objects the same as pg_dump would, because
> pg_restore doesn't really have enough info to deal with indexes and
> table constraints the way pg_dump does. Perhaps we could intuit the
> parent table by examining object dependencies, but that would be a
> bunch of new logic that seems like fit material for a different patch.
> In the meantime I just added a disclaimer to pg_restore.sgml explaining
> this.
>

Unless we really wanted to keep prior-version compatibility it would seem
more reliable to have pg_dump generate a new TOC entry type describing
these dependencies and have pg_restore read and interpret them during
selective restore mode. Basically a cross-referencing "if you restore A
also restore B". Where A can only be tables and B indexes and constraints
(if we can get away with it being that limited initially).

David J.