Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2021 10:35:27 +0200
From: hubert depesz lubaczewski <depesz@depesz.com>
Sender: depesz@depesz.com
To: "Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)" <postgresql@mailpen.com>
Cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: The trap when using pg_dumpall
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On Sat, Jul 03, 2021 at 11:04:26PM -0700, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote:
> Well, I never store the output of pg_dumpall directly; I pipe it through
> gzip, & the resultant size differs by about 1% from the size from pg_dump in
> custom-archive format.
> 
> I also found that pg_dumpall -g doesn't get the triggers; pg_dumpall -s
> does.  I don't know if pg-dump gets the triggers.

Triggers are inside database, so normal pg_dump handles them.

Generally, I stand firmly in position that one should never use
pg_dumpall.

Size of dump is one thing, but inability to sanely filter what you will
load is deal breaker.

Plus - with modern pg_dump and -Fd, both dumping time, and loading time
can be significantly reduced thanks to parallelism.

Wrote about it:
https://www.depesz.com/2019/12/10/how-to-effectively-dump-postgresql-databases/

depesz