This is the work-flow I've in mind: 1a) take out *all* data from a table in chunks (M record for each file, one big file?) (\copy??, from inside a scripting language?) 2a) process each file with awk to produce N files very similar each other (substantially turn them into very simple xml) 3a) gzip them 2b) use any scripting language to process and gzip them avoiding a bit of disk IO Does PostgreSQL offer me any contrib, module, technique... to save some IO (and maybe disk space for temporary results?). Are there any memory usage implication if I'm doing a: pg_query("select a,b,c from verylargetable; --no where clause"); vs. the \copy equivalent any way to avoid them? thanks -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general