Hi
Recently I ran into a case where someone was wondering why it was not
possible to dump the contents of a view, even though the documentation [1]
seems to imply this is possible.
Currently it says:
Dump only tables with names matching pattern. For this purpose, "table"
includes views, materialized views, sequences, and foreign tables.
The attached patch attempts to clarify that only definitions of those objects
will be dumped, and also mentions that dumping foreign table data requires the
--include-foreign-data option.
I suggest backpatching any changes to Pg13 where the --include-foreign-data
option was added.
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgdump.html
Regards
Ian Barwick
--
EnterpriseDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com
commit 7240af7e6b7168ff1ad1790c6537b29f93fb6891
Author: Ian Barwick <barw...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue Oct 6 21:40:37 2020 +0900
doc: clarify behaviour of pg_dump's -t/--table option
The existing wording gives the impression it might be possible to
dump the contents of views, which is not possible. Also, from PostgreSQL
13 it is possible to dump the contents of foreign tables, but this
requires the --include-foreign-data option.
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml
index f99dc3f31e..4e2c80983e 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml
@@ -517,9 +517,7 @@ PostgreSQL documentation
<listitem>
<para>
Dump only tables with names matching
- <replaceable class="parameter">pattern</replaceable>.
- For this purpose, <quote>table</quote> includes views, materialized views,
- sequences, and foreign tables. Multiple tables
+ <replaceable class="parameter">pattern</replaceable>. Multiple tables
can be selected by writing multiple <option>-t</option> switches. The
<replaceable class="parameter">pattern</replaceable> parameter is
interpreted as a pattern according to the same rules used by
@@ -531,6 +529,14 @@ PostgreSQL documentation
<xref linkend="pg-dump-examples"/> below.
</para>
+ <para>
+ As well as tables, this option can be used to dump views, materialized views,
+ foreign tables, and sequence definitions. However it will not dump the contents
+ of views or materialized views, and the contents of foreign tables will only be
+ dumped if the corresponding foreign server is specified with
+ <option>--include-foreign-data</option>.
+ </para>
+
<para>
The <option>-n</option> and <option>-N</option> switches have no effect when
<option>-t</option> is used, because tables selected by <option>-t</option> will
