Greg Stark wrote: > On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Stephen R. van den Berg <s...@cuci.nl> wrote: > > In order to simplify recovery at this point (enormously), it would > > have been very helpful (at almost negligible cost), to have the name > > of the table, the name of the columns, and the types of the > > columns available. > > > > Why don't we insert that data into the first page of a regular table > > file after in the special data area? > > > > I'd be willing to create a patch for that (should be pretty easy), > > if nobody considers it to be a bad idea. > > There isn't necessarily one value for these attributes. You can > rename columns and that rename may succeed and commit or fail and > rollback. You can drop or add columns and some rows will have or not > have the added columns at all. You could even add a column, insert > some rows, then abort -- all in a transaction. So some (aborted) rows > will have extra columns that aren't even present in the current table > definition. > > All this isn't to say the idea you're presenting is impossible or a > bad idea. If this meta information was only a hint for forensic > purposes and you take into account these caveats it might still be > useful. But I'm not sure how useful. I mean, you can't really decipher > everything properly without the data in the catalog -- and you have to > premise this on the idea that you've lost everything in the catalog > but not the data in other tables. Which seems like a narrow use case.
I was thinking we could dump a flat file very 15 minutes into each database directory that had recovery-useful information. It wouldn't be perfect, but would probably be sufficient for most forensics. -- Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com + It's impossible for everything to be true. + -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
