<div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal">Greetings!<p class="MsoNormal"> <p class="MsoNormal">I have been curious
forseveral years: Why doesn’t PGAdmin’s backup screen allow me to save data only or schema only in custom format?<p
class="MsoNormal"> <pclass="MsoNormal"> <p class="MsoNormal">I am trying to test a long-running application that uses a
PostgreSQLdatabase. I occasionally need to change or add a database function or make some other change that does not
affecttable structures. I also need to save backups of the database at various times as the application runs so I can
restartthe application from that point. In the past, if I changed a database function, I needed to open all of the
databasecopies I’ve been using and apply the change to each one individually. <p class="MsoNormal"> <p
class="MsoNormal">Itoccurred to me recently that if I save the data and schema separately, then I can create a
database,load the latest version of the schema (with the changed function) into it, and then choose which state of data
toload (beginning of the application, middle, near the end, or whatever). <p class="MsoNormal"> <p
class="MsoNormal">WithPGAdmin’s backup screen, I only get a choice of data only or schema only if I select a plain
formatfor my backup file. But then, if I use psql to restore my data, all triggers are active, and the effects of the
triggersmean that the restored data is not the same as the data that was backed up. psql does not have a disable
triggersoptions. On the other hand, pg_restore does have an option to disable triggers, ensuring that the restored
datais identical to the saved data. But pg_restore only works on custom format files. PGAdmin’s backup screen is
merelya GUI wrapper around the pg_dump program, and with pg_dump there’s no problem saving schema only or data only
intocustom-format files. So why doesn’t PGAdmin let us do it?<p class="MsoNormal"> <p class="MsoNormal">Thanks very
much.<pclass="MsoNormal"> <p class="MsoNormal">RobR</div>