We have an awkward situation. An affiliate organization periodically sends us a stack of CDs. On the first one there are a couple of small scripts to handle installing the data and/or upgrading the database schema. Most of the CD's contents are large data files to be used to update a postgresql database. This would be OK if we had much need for the full database. In practice, we typically spend all the time loading the data into the database only to turn around and run our own C++ program that generates extracts containing the relatively few data fields that we need on another project (where we load the data into a Berkeley database and use it from there). I would like to skip the time consuming process of Postgresql loading before extracting, and somehow directly generate the extracts that we need with a program that reads directly from the database dump/load files on the CDs. The affiliate organization has made it clear that they cannot afford the resources to make a customized limited edition of their data. I would appreciate some hints on the issues. Which of the files in such a situation would have the data layout information? If there are some of you that have actually done something similar (directly read the archive files without loading them), I'd greatly appreciate hearing about it. Thanks -bC
