Is there a simple way to create a copy of a database or schema in PostgreSQL 8.1?
I'm testing some software which does a lot of updates to a particular schema within a database, and I'd like to make a copy of it so I can run some comparisons against the original.
If it's on the same server, you just use the CREATE DATABASE command with the TEMPLATE parameter. For example:
CREATE DATABASE newdb WITH TEMPLATE olddb;
pg_dump with the --schema-only option.
If you have to copy the schema from the local database to a remote database, you may use one of the following two options.
Option A
Copy the schema from the local database to a dump file.
pg_dump -U postgres -Cs database > dump_file
Copy the dump file from the local server to the remote server.
scp localuser#localhost:dump_file remoteuser#remotehost:dump_file
Connect to the remote server.
ssh remoteuser#remotehost
Copy the schema from the dump file to the remote database.
psql -U postgres database < dump_file
Option B
Copy the schema directly from the local database to the remote database without using an intermediate file.
pg_dump -h localhost -U postgres -Cs database | psql -h remotehost -U postgres database
This blog post might prove helpful for you if you want to learn more about options for copying the database using pg_dump.
This can be done by running the following command:
CREATE DATABASE [Database to create] WITH TEMPLATE [Database to copy] OWNER [Your username];
Once filled in with your database names and your username, this will create a copy of the specified database. This will work as long as there are no other active connections to the database you wish to copy. If there are other active connections you can temporarily terminate the connections by using this command first:
SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pg_stat_activity.pid)
FROM pg_stat_activity
WHERE pg_stat_activity.datname = '[Database to copy]'
AND pid <> pg_backend_pid();
A good article that I wrote for Chartio's Data School which goes a bit more in depth on how to do this can be found here:
https://dataschool.com/learn/how-to-create-a-copy-of-a-database-in-postgresql-using-psql
Related
I have a Postgres database schema in machine A, I want to copy the whole database schema into machine B using Dbeaver. How can I do that?
You should take the backup using pg_dump. To take a dump from a remote server you should run the following
pg_dump -h host_address -U username -s schema_name -Fc database_name > dump_file_path.sql
This will create a SQL dump of the selected schema. Then you can use PSQL or DBeaver to import and create the schema in your server B or database B.
To do it with psql you should run the following -
psql "sslmode=disable dbname=_db_name_ user=_user_ hostaddr=_host_" < exported_sql_file_path
I have a AWS RDS PostgreSQL 13 server with some databases. I have to create an empty copy of one database (empty means schema (tables, views, functions) + security (users, roles)).
Is pg_dump -s what I am looking for?
Thanks!
pg_dump -d db_name -s. You will also need to do pg_dumpall -g to get the global data e.g. roles. This will get all global data for the Postgres cluster, so you may have more then you need for the particular database.
Postgres allows the use of any existing database on the server as a template when creating a new database. I'm not sure whether pgAdmin gives you the option on the create database dialog but you should be able to execute the following in a query window if it doesn't:
CREATE DATABASE newdb WITH TEMPLATE originaldb OWNER dbuser;
Still, you may get:
ERROR: source database "originaldb" is being accessed by other users
To disconnect all other users from the database, you can use this query:
SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pg_stat_activity.pid) FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE pg_stat_activity.datname = 'originaldb' AND pid <> pg_backend_pid();
I'm having difficulty restoring a DB to an AWS RDS Postgresql instance. Context is that i am backing up from one RDS instance and restoring to another RDS insurance. They both have the same version of Postgresql 9.6.5.
I was able to take a dump using the following command:
./pg_dump.exe -U dbuser -W -h prod-pgsql-rds.3ft5coqxjdnq.eu-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com -d devdb > c:\tmp\backup.sql
From the resulting .sql file, I then attempted a restore to another RDS instance which is also using Postgresql 9.6.5 using below command:
./pg_restore.exe -U dbuser -d testdevdb -h dev-pgsql-rds.cym8coqx52lq.eu-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com "c:\tmp\backup.sql"
*I also tried the -f switch in the above restore command instead of the " " quotes before/after the file name
But when I try to restore it to a newly created database I get the following error:
pg_restore: [archiver] input file does not appear to be a valid archive
Can anyone help? FYI, I am using PGAdmin 4 via Windows PowerShell. I have to edit some of the values in the strings above due to data sensitivity.
pg_restore is only used for the other, non-plain-text output formats that pg_dump can output. For .sql dumps, you just use psql. See the docs on restoring from backups.
In a Unix env, you'd do psql [yourflags] < /tmp/backup.sql, but I'm unfamiliar with powershell and don't know if it supports < for input redirection; hopefully either it's present or you know the equivalent PowerShell syntax.
So I couldn't get psql or pg_restore to work so opted to import the .SQL file into via the SQL query tool in PGAmdin. This through up some errors so had to make several changes to the .SQL file and perform below:
Commented out a couple of lines that were causing errors
Elevated permissions for the user and made him the owner of for the Schema and DB properties by right-clicking on these via PGAdmin
The .sql file was making several references to the user from the source RDS DB so had to do a find and replace with a user account created for the destination RDS DB. Alternatively, I could have just created a new user on the destination DB with the same username and password as the source DB and then make him the owner in ref to step 2.
First of all, I am new to PostgreSQL.
So am I right thinking that one cannot run most of the psql util commands nor non-db-specified sql commands if there isn't a db with same name of the current user's?
That is saying e.g., if I run psql "show databases;" as user postgres while there isn't a db called "postgres", I won't be able to run the command.
Question is that in this case, one cannot find the list of the dbs before knowing any of db exits, is that how it works?
You have to connect to a database. By default, the databases "template1" and "postgres" will exist and will accept connections.
If your PostgreSQL admin has changed things in such a way that you can't connect to either of those databases, you'll have to do one of two things.
Ask the PostgreSQL admin what database you're supposed to connect to.
Create a database, then connect to it. There's more than one way to do this.
If you have CREATEDB privileges, you can create a database on the psql command line. For example, I have CREATEDB privileges here, so I can do this, which creates the database "mike" and exits.
$ psql -h localhost -p 5435 -U mike -c "create database mike"
Now I can connect to "mike" by either taking advantage of the default database name, or by specifying it.
$ psql -h localhost -p 5435 -U mike
$ psql -h localhost -p 5435 -U mike mike
You can. If you connect (with proper user, usually postgres) to the postgres database there are several tables on the pg_catalog (PostgreSQL) among those is pg_database table a simple select * from pg_database will show all databases.
Here is an image showing that on pgAdmin III Tool
There is no way of doing exactly what you want without, at least, knowing the database catalog. The postgres database is default and will exist in all installed instances (unless someone had droped it). All RDBMs is the same they all have the catalog (also named information_schema, or other names depending on vendor) which holds all information about the databases, tables, constraints, etc.
What would be the best way to copy data from one table, one database, one server to the table in another database, another server in PostgreSQL?
pg_dump allows the dumping of only select tables:
pg_dump -Fc -f output.dump -t tablename databasename
(dump 'tablename' from database 'databasename' into file 'output.dump' in pg_dumps binary custom format)
You can restore that dump on your other server with pg_restore:
pg_restore -d databasename output.dump
If the table itself already exists in your target database, you can import only the rows by adding the --data-only flag.
I shared a shell to copy table from one server to another PostgreSQL server.
Please refer this another stack question.
Copying PostgreSQL database to another server