At the pgdata root there is the pg_snapshots folder. Which PostgreSQL functionality is using that folder, what kind of data is written in there.
pg_snapshot stores data for query snapshots that have been exported with pg_export_snapshot. The purpose of exported snapshots is that several database sessions can see exactly the same state of the database. This is for example used for parallel pg_dump with the "directory" format, but it can also be useful to synchronize the original data copy with the capture of data modifications via logical decoding.
Related
I'm looking for a reference and ways to separating the WAL transaction Logs and the data into two different disk for postgres.
That can be done when you create the cluster:
initdb --waldir=/somewhere/else datadir
But you can also do it later:
stop the server
move pg_wal somewhere else
create a symbolic link pg_wal instead that points to the new location
Note that a pg_basebackup will not preserve the symbolic link, so if you want to create a standby where pg_wal is a symbolic link, you'll need to use the --waldir option of pg_basebackup.
I have created a Firebird multi-file database
Main Database file D:\Database\MainDB.fdb
Secondary files (240 Files) located under D:\Database\DBFiles\Data001.fdb to D:\Database\DBFiles\Data240.fdb
When copy database to another location and trying to open it Firebird doesn't locate the files if they are not in D:\ partition
I want Firebird to locate the secondary files under Database\DBFiels folder at the new path.
So if I copy the database to C:\Database\MainDB.fdb
Firebird would open Data001.fdb in new path like C:\Database\DBFiles instead of old path in D:\Database\DBFiles where they were initially created
Can that be done with Firebird? if not, then how it should be done?
Update:
Finally I found out it's not possiable to change Firebird database secondary files usign Firebird.
but I found this Firebird FAQ mention GLINK tool but It doesn't support Firebird 3.x so I didn't test it, and It's not recommended to use it even with supported versions of Firebird.
Done what exactly?
UPD. I edited the very vague original question to make clear WHAT the topic starter wants.
You can not reliably "copy files with Firebird" - Firebird is not files copying tool. You can to a degree use EXTERNAL TABLE for raw files access, but very limited and not upon the database itself.
It is dangerous practice to "copy databases" while Firebird is working, because you would only copy part of the data. The recently updated data that is in memory cache but did not yet made it on disk would be lost. The database file would be inconsistent with some data updated and some not yet. When you "copy database files" you have first to shutdown either those databases or even the whole Firebird server.
Firebird has it's own tools for moving databases around - and those are called backup/restore tools. Maybe what you need is nbackup tool, if gbak is too slow for you.
Finally, you can list files that comprise the database. You can do it via gstat utility or via "Services API" it uses. You also can select from RDB$FILES system table. However what would you do after you did it? The very access to the database makes it badly suited for consequent copying (#2). You would perhaps need to shutdown database, turn it to read-only AND single-user state, and only then attach to it and read RDB$FILES. And after copying done - you would have to de-shutdown the database. Kinda much more complex than nbackup.
https://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/reference_manuals/user_manuals/html/gstat-example-header.html
https://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/reference_manuals/user_manuals/html/gfix-dbstartstop.html
https://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/reference_manuals/fblangref25-en/html/fblangref-appx04-files.html
https://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/reference_manuals/user_manuals/html/gbak.html
https://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/reference_manuals/user_manuals/html/nbackup.html
Is it possible to create "DIRECTORY" object in Postgres?
If not can some help me with a solution how implement it on PostgreSQL.
Not the best option, but you could use:
COPY (select 1) TO PROGRAM 'mkdir --mode=777 -p /path/to/your/directory/'
Note that only the last part of directory get the permissions set in mode.
There is no equivalent concept to an "Oracle directory" in Postgres.
The alternatives depend on why the "Oracle directory" is needed.
If the directory is needed to read and write files on the database server, then this can be done through Generic File Access Functions. Access to those functions is restricted to superusers (details in the linked section of the manual). If regular users should be able to use them, the best thing would be to create wrapper functions and then grant execute on those functions to the users in question.
For security reasons, only directories inside the database cluster can be accessed.
But it's possible to create symlinks inside the data directory that point to directories outside the data directory. Access privileges on those directories need to be properly setup for the postgres operating system user (the one under which the postgres process is started)
If the directory is needed to access e.g. CSV files through Oracle's external tables, then there is no need for a "directory". The file FDW foreign data wrapper, can access files outside the data directory (provided access privileges have been setup correctly on the file system level).
The question doesn't even make sense really. PostgreSQL is a database management system. It doesn't have files and directories.
The closest parallel I can think of is schemas - see CREATE SCHEMA.
Now, if you want to use COPY to write output to the server's disk and want to create a directory to put that output in... then no, there's nothing like that. But you can use PL/Perlu or PL/Pythonu to do it easily enough.
I read these docs:
Description
pg_restore is a utility for restoring a PostgreSQL database from an
archive created by pg_dump in one of the non-plain-text formats. It
will issue the commands necessary to reconstruct the database to the
state it was in at the time it was saved. The archive files also allow
pg_restore to be selective about what is restored, or even to reorder
the items prior to being restored. The archive files are designed to
be portable across architectures.
pg_restore can operate in two modes. If a database name is specified,
pg_restore connects to that database and restores archive contents
directly into the database. Otherwise, a script containing the SQL
commands necessary to rebuild the database is created and written to a
file or standard output. This script output is equivalent to the plain
text output format of pg_dump. Some of the options controlling the
output are therefore analogous to pg_dump options.
Obviously, pg_restore cannot restore information that is not present
in the archive file. For instance, if the archive was made using the
"dump data as INSERT commands" option, pg_restore will not be able to
load the data using COPY statements.
but it's still unclear to me if pg_restore just loads database data or if it also creates the structure of the database too.
It depends on the options you pass, and obviously in the stored information in the dump. If you keep reading through the documentation you will see this option:
--data-only
Restore only the data, not the schema (data definitions). Table data, large objects, and sequence values are restored, if
present in the archive.
This option is similar to, but for historical reasons not identical to, specifying --section=data.
That is obviously allowing you to restore only the schema but no the data.
I have inserted and fetched data using MongoDB, in PHP. Is there an actual copy of this data in a document somewhere?
By default Mongo stores its data in the directory /data/db.
You can specify a different directory using the --dbpath option.
If you’re running Mongo on Windows then the directory will be C:\data\db, where C is the drive letter of the working directory in which Mongo was started. This is quite confusing, so on Windows I’d recommend that you always specify a data directory using --dbpath.
MongoDB stores it's data in the data directory specified by --dbpath. It uses a database format so it's not actual documents, but there are multiple documents in each file and you cannot easily extract the data from this format yourself.
To read and/or update a document you need to use a MongoDB client, in the same way that you send SQL queries to MySQL through a MySQL client. You probably want to do it programmatically by using one of the client libraries for your programming language, but there is also a command-line client if you need to do manual updates.