From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com>
cc: pgsql-admin <pgsql-admin@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: PostgreSQL equivalents to dbms_metadata.get_ddl &
 dbms_metadata.get_dependent_ddl
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Comments: In-reply-to richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com>
	message dated "Mon, 20 Mar 2023 10:48:45 -0400"
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Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2023 11:10:08 -0400
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richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> writes:
> Look below for the difference in the two functions, how they are used, t=
he
> amount of knowledge you need to posses in order to run them and the
> difference in the output.

I'm not finding this terribly convincing, because I don't exactly see
what is the use-case for having that DDL in isolation.  Or in other
words, what is your use-case that you find pg_dump so unsatisfactory
for?  It knows all this stuff, and it also knows things like which
other objects a given object depends on and how to cope with circular
dependencies.  Most of the reasons that I can think of for wanting
the pg_get_*def functions that we don't already have seem to reduce
to building partially-baked versions of pg_dump.

If your concern is that you can't get pg_dump to slice up the schema
in exactly the way you want, adding some more options to it might be
an easier sell than implementing/maintaining a bunch of duplicate
functionality.  We just got done adding [1], for example.

			regards, tom lane

[1] https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=3Dpostgresql.git;a=3Dcommitdiff;h=
=3Da563c24c9574b74f4883c004c89275bba03c3c26