Mike Christensen <mike@kitchenpc.com> writes:
>> Is the TAR format just the raw SQL commands, just tar'ed and then sent
>> over the wire?
Sorta. If you pull it apart with tar, you'll find out there's a SQL
script that creates the database schema, and then a separate tar-member
file containing the data for each table.
Custom format goes this a little better by splitting the information up
into a separate archive item for each database object. But there's no
tool other than pg_restore that knows how to deconstruct custom-format
archives.
regards, tom lane