PostgreSQL 8.3 Pg_dump Pg_Restore Cheatsheet Overview

Backup and Restore is probably the most important thing to know how to do when you have a database with data you care about.

The utilities in PostgreSQL that accomplish these tasks are pg_restore, pg_dump, pg_dumpall, and for restore of plain text dumps - psql.

A lot of the switches used by pg_dump, pg_restore, pg_dumpall are common to all three and on rare cases, the switches used by each overlap but mean different things. pg_dump and pg_restore are complementary. You use pg_dump to do hot backups of a database and pg_restore to restore it either to another database or to recover portions of a database.

Rather than trying to keep track of which switch works with which, we decided to combine all into a single cheat sheet with a column denoting which utility the switch is supported in. Pretty much all the text is compiled from the --help switch of each.

Below is a Thumbnail view of the PostgreSQL 8.3 Dump Restore cheat sheet that covers PostgreSQL 8.3 pg_dump, pg_dumpall, pg_restore utilities.

PDF Portrait version 8.5 x 11" of this cheatsheet is available at PostgreSQL 8.3 Dump Restore 8.5 x 11 and also available in PDF A4 format and HTML.