>Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Glyn Astill wrote: > > Out of interest, how does pg_dump manage to do a snapshot of a > > database at an instant in time? > > > > My mental picture of pg_dump was just a series of queries dumping > out > > the tables... > > begin; > set transaction isolation level serializable; > > --- begin dumping stuff; > Wouldn't that just lock everything so nothing could be updated? Or just the table it is outputting? I'm guessing I need to go off and school myself on different isolation levels etc to understand, but say I have 2 tables "sales" and "sold", and users are selling items with inserts into the sales table and a count updating manually in sold. Wouldn't these end up inconsistant in the dump? ___________________________________________________________ Support the World Aids Awareness campaign this month with Yahoo! For Good http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/ ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend