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pg_dump
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pg_dump
pg_dump — extract a PostgreSQL database into a script file or other archive file

Synopsis
pg_dump [connection-option...] [option...] [dbname]

Description
pg_dump is a utility for backing up a PostgreSQL database. It makes consistent backups even if the database is being used
concurrently. pg_dump does not block other users accessing the database (readers or writers).

pg_dump only dumps a single database. To back up an entire cluster, or to back up global objects that are common to all databases in
a cluster (such as roles and tablespaces), use pg_dumpall.

Dumps can be output in script or archive file formats. Script dumps are plain-text files containing the SQL commands required to
reconstruct the database to the state it was in at the time it was saved. To restore from such a script, feed it to psql. Script files can be
used to reconstruct the database even on other machines and other architectures; with some modifications, even on other SQL
database products.

The alternative archive file formats must be used with pg_restore to rebuild the database. They allow pg_restore to be selective about
what is restored, or even to reorder the items prior to being restored. The archive file formats are designed to be portable across
architectures.

When used with one of the archive file formats and combined with pg_restore, pg_dump provides a flexible archival and transfer
mechanism. pg_dump can be used to backup an entire database, then pg_restore can be used to examine the archive and/or select
which parts of the database are to be restored. The most flexible output file formats are the “custom” format (-Fc) and the “directory”
format (-Fd). They allow for selection and reordering of all archived items, support parallel restoration, and are compressed by
default. The “directory” format is the only format that supports parallel dumps.

While running pg_dump, one should examine the output for any warnings (printed on standard error), especially in light of the
limitations listed below.

Options
The following command-line options control the content and format of the output.

dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be dumped. If this is not specified, the environment variable PGDATABASE is used. If
that is not set, the user name specified for the connection is used.

-a

--data-only

Dump only the data, not the schema (data definitions). Table data, large objects, and sequence values are dumped.

This option is similar to, but for historical reasons not identical to, specifying --section=data.

-b

--blobs

Include large objects in the dump. This is the default behavior except when --schema, --table, or --schema-only is
specified. The -b switch is therefore only useful to add large objects to dumps where a specific schema or table has been
requested. Note that blobs are considered data and therefore will be included when --data-only is used, but not when --
schema-only is.
-B

--no-blobs

Exclude large objects in the dump.

When both -b and -B are given, the behavior is to output large objects, when data is being dumped, see the -b
documentation.

-c

--clean

Output commands to clean (drop) database objects prior to outputting the commands for creating them. (Unless --if-
exists is also specified, restore might generate some harmless error messages, if any objects were not present in the
destination database.)

This option is ignored when emitting an archive (non-text) output file. For the archive formats, you can specify the option
when you call pg_restore.

-C

--create

Begin the output with a command to create the database itself and reconnect to the created database. (With a script of this
form, it doesn't matter which database in the destination installation you connect to before running the script.) If --clean is
also specified, the script drops and recreates the target database before reconnecting to it.

With --create, the output also includes the database's comment if any, and any configuration variable settings that are
specific to this database, that is, any ALTER DATABASE ... SET ... and ALTER ROLE ... IN DATABASE ... SET ...
commands that mention this database. Access privileges for the database itself are also dumped, unless --no-acl is
specified.

This option is ignored when emitting an archive (non-text) output file. For the archive formats, you can specify the option
when you call pg_restore.

-e pattern

--extension=pattern

Dump only extensions matching pattern. When this option is not specified, all non-system extensions in the target
database will be dumped. Multiple extensions can be selected by writing multiple -e switches. The pattern parameter is
interpreted as a pattern according to the same rules used by psql's \d commands (see Patterns), so multiple extensions can
also be selected by writing wildcard characters in the pattern. When using wildcards, be careful to quote the pattern if
needed to prevent the shell from expanding the wildcards.

Any configuration relation registered by pg_extension_config_dump is included in the dump if its extension is specified
by --extension.

Note
When -e is specified, pg_dump makes no attempt to dump any other database
objects that the selected extension(s) might depend upon. Therefore, there is no
guarantee that the results of a specific-extension dump can be successfully restored
by themselves into a clean database.

-E encoding

--encoding=encoding

Create the dump in the specified character set encoding. By default, the dump is created in the database encoding. (Another
way to get the same result is to set the PGCLIENTENCODING environment variable to the desired dump encoding.) The
supported encodings are described in Section 24.3.1.

-f file

--file=file

Send output to the specified file. This parameter can be omitted for file based output formats, in which case the standard
output is used. It must be given for the directory output format however, where it specifies the target directory instead of a
file. In this case the directory is created by pg_dump and must not exist before.

-F format

--format=format

Selects the format of the output. format can be one of the following:
 p

plain

Output a plain-text SQL script file (the default).

custom

Output a custom-format archive suitable for input into pg_restore. Together with the directory output format, this is the
most flexible output format in that it allows manual selection and reordering of archived items during restore. This
format is also compressed by default.

directory

Output a directory-format archive suitable for input into pg_restore. This will create a directory with one file for each
table and blob being dumped, plus a so-called Table of Contents file describing the dumped objects in a machine-
readable format that pg_restore can read. A directory format archive can be manipulated with standard Unix tools; for
example, files in an uncompressed archive can be compressed with the gzip tool. This format is compressed by default
and also supports parallel dumps.

tar

Output a tar-format archive suitable for input into pg_restore. The tar format is compatible with the directory format:
extracting a tar-format archive produces a valid directory-format archive. However, the tar format does not support
compression. Also, when using tar format the relative order of table data items cannot be changed during restore.

-j njobs

--jobs=njobs

Run the dump in parallel by dumping njobs tables simultaneously. This option may reduce the time needed to perform the
dump but it also increases the load on the database server. You can only use this option with the directory output format
because this is the only output format where multiple processes can write their data at the same time.

pg_dump will open njobs + 1 connections to the database, so make sure your max_connections setting is high enough to
accommodate all connections.

Requesting exclusive locks on database objects while running a parallel dump could cause the dump to fail. The reason is
that the pg_dump leader process requests shared locks on the objects that the worker processes are going to dump later in
order to make sure that nobody deletes them and makes them go away while the dump is running. If another client then
requests an exclusive lock on a table, that lock will not be granted but will be queued waiting for the shared lock of the
leader process to be released. Consequently any other access to the table will not be granted either and will queue after the
exclusive lock request. This includes the worker process trying to dump the table. Without any precautions this would be a
classic deadlock situation. To detect this conflict, the pg_dump worker process requests another shared lock using the
NOWAIT option. If the worker process is not granted this shared lock, somebody else must have requested an exclusive lock
in the meantime and there is no way to continue with the dump, so pg_dump has no choice but to abort the dump.

For a consistent backup, the database server needs to support synchronized snapshots, a feature that was introduced in
PostgreSQL 9.2 for primary servers and 10 for standbys. With this feature, database clients can ensure they see the same
data set even though they use different connections. pg_dump -j uses multiple database connections; it connects to the
database once with the leader process and once again for each worker job. Without the synchronized snapshot feature, the
different worker jobs wouldn't be guaranteed to see the same data in each connection, which could lead to an inconsistent
backup.

If you want to run a parallel dump of a pre-9.2 server, you need to make sure that the database content doesn't change from
between the time the leader connects to the database until the last worker job has connected to the database. The easiest
way to do this is to halt any data modifying processes (DDL and DML) accessing the database before starting the backup.
You also need to specify the --no-synchronized-snapshots parameter when running pg_dump -j against a pre-9.2
PostgreSQL server.

-n pattern

--schema=pattern

Dump only schemas matching pattern; this selects both the schema itself, and all its contained objects. When this option is
not specified, all non-system schemas in the target database will be dumped. Multiple schemas can be selected by writing
multiple -n switches. The pattern parameter is interpreted as a pattern according to the same rules used by psql's \d
commands (see Patterns below), so multiple schemas can also be selected by writing wildcard characters in the pattern.
When using wildcards, be careful to quote the pattern if needed to prevent the shell from expanding the wildcards; see
Examples below.

Note
 When -n is specified, pg_dump makes no attempt to dump any other database
objects that the selected schema(s) might depend upon. Therefore, there is no
guarantee that the results of a specific-schema dump can be successfully restored by
themselves into a clean database.

Note
Non-schema objects such as blobs are not dumped when -n is specified. You can add
blobs back to the dump with the --blobs switch.

-N pattern

--exclude-schema=pattern

Do not dump any schemas matching pattern. The pattern is interpreted according to the same rules as for -n. -N can be
given more than once to exclude schemas matching any of several patterns.

When both -n and -N are given, the behavior is to dump just the schemas that match at least one -n switch but no -N
switches. If -N appears without -n, then schemas matching -N are excluded from what is otherwise a normal dump.

-O

--no-owner

Do not output commands to set ownership of objects to match the original database. By default, pg_dump issues ALTER
OWNER or SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION statements to set ownership of created database objects. These statements will
fail when the script is run unless it is started by a superuser (or the same user that owns all of the objects in the script). To
make a script that can be restored by any user, but will give that user ownership of all the objects, specify -O.

This option is ignored when emitting an archive (non-text) output file. For the archive formats, you can specify the option
when you call pg_restore.

-R

--no-reconnect

This option is obsolete but still accepted for backwards compatibility.

-s

--schema-only

Dump only the object definitions (schema), not data.

This option is the inverse of --data-only. It is similar to, but for historical reasons not identical to, specifying --
section=pre-data --section=post-data.

(Do not confuse this with the --schema option, which uses the word “schema” in a different meaning.)

To exclude table data for only a subset of tables in the database, see --exclude-table-data.

-S username

--superuser=username

Specify the superuser user name to use when disabling triggers. This is relevant only if --disable-triggers is used.
(Usually, it's better to leave this out, and instead start the resulting script as superuser.)

-t pattern

--table=pattern

Dump only tables with names matching pattern. Multiple tables can be selected by writing multiple -t switches. The
pattern parameter is interpreted as a pattern according to the same rules used by psql's \d commands (see Patterns
below), so multiple tables can also be selected by writing wildcard characters in the pattern. When using wildcards, be
careful to quote the pattern if needed to prevent the shell from expanding the wildcards; see Examples below.

As well as tables, this option can be used to dump the definition of matching views, materialized views, foreign tables, and
sequences. It will not dump the contents of views or materialized views, and the contents of foreign tables will only be
dumped if the corresponding foreign server is specified with --include-foreign-data.

The -n and -N switches have no effect when -t is used, because tables selected by -t will be dumped regardless of those
switches, and non-table objects will not be dumped.

Note
 When -t is specified, pg_dump makes no attempt to dump any other database
objects that the selected table(s) might depend upon. Therefore, there is no
guarantee that the results of a specific-table dump can be successfully restored by
themselves into a clean database.

-T pattern

--exclude-table=pattern

Do not dump any tables matching pattern. The pattern is interpreted according to the same rules as for -t. -T can be
given more than once to exclude tables matching any of several patterns.

When both -t and -T are given, the behavior is to dump just the tables that match at least one -t switch but no -T
switches. If -T appears without -t, then tables matching -T are excluded from what is otherwise a normal dump.

-v

--verbose

Specifies verbose mode. This will cause pg_dump to output detailed object comments and start/stop times to the dump file,
and progress messages to standard error. Repeating the option causes additional debug-level messages to appear on
standard error.

-V

--version

Print the pg_dump version and exit.

-x

--no-privileges

--no-acl

Prevent dumping of access privileges (grant/revoke commands).

-Z 0..9

--compress=0..9

Specify the compression level to use. Zero means no compression. For the custom and directory archive formats, this
specifies compression of individual table-data segments, and the default is to compress at a moderate level. For plain text
output, setting a nonzero compression level causes the entire output file to be compressed, as though it had been fed
through gzip; but the default is not to compress. The tar archive format currently does not support compression at all.

--binary-upgrade

This option is for use by in-place upgrade utilities. Its use for other purposes is not recommended or supported. The
behavior of the option may change in future releases without notice.

--column-inserts

--attribute-inserts

Dump data as INSERT commands with explicit column names (INSERT INTO table (column, ...) VALUES ...). This
will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases. Any
error during reloading will cause only rows that are part of the problematic INSERT to be lost, rather than the entire table
contents.

--disable-dollar-quoting

This option disables the use of dollar quoting for function bodies, and forces them to be quoted using SQL standard string
syntax.

--disable-triggers

This option is relevant only when creating a data-only dump. It instructs pg_dump to include commands to temporarily
disable triggers on the target tables while the data is reloaded. Use this if you have referential integrity checks or other
triggers on the tables that you do not want to invoke during data reload.

Presently, the commands emitted for --disable-triggers must be done as superuser. So, you should also specify a
superuser name with -S, or preferably be careful to start the resulting script as a superuser.

This option is ignored when emitting an archive (non-text) output file. For the archive formats, you can specify the option
when you call pg_restore.

--enable-row-security
 This option is relevant only when dumping the contents of a table which has row security. By default, pg_dump will set
row_security to off, to ensure that all data is dumped from the table. If the user does not have sufficient privileges to bypass
row security, then an error is thrown. This parameter instructs pg_dump to set row_security to on instead, allowing the user
to dump the parts of the contents of the table that they have access to.

Note that if you use this option currently, you probably also want the dump be in INSERT format, as the COPY FROM during
restore does not support row security.

--exclude-table-data=pattern

Do not dump data for any tables matching pattern. The pattern is interpreted according to the same rules as for -t. --
exclude-table-data can be given more than once to exclude tables matching any of several patterns. This option is
useful when you need the definition of a particular table even though you do not need the data in it.

To exclude data for all tables in the database, see --schema-only.

--extra-float-digits=ndigits

Use the specified value of extra_float_digits when dumping floating-point data, instead of the maximum available
precision. Routine dumps made for backup purposes should not use this option.

--if-exists

Use conditional commands (i.e., add an IF EXISTS clause) when cleaning database objects. This option is not valid unless -
-clean is also specified.

--include-foreign-data=foreignserver

Dump the data for any foreign table with a foreign server matching foreignserver pattern. Multiple foreign servers can be
selected by writing multiple --include-foreign-data switches. Also, the foreignserver parameter is interpreted as a
pattern according to the same rules used by psql's \d commands (see Patterns below), so multiple foreign servers can also
be selected by writing wildcard characters in the pattern. When using wildcards, be careful to quote the pattern if needed to
prevent the shell from expanding the wildcards; see Examples below. The only exception is that an empty pattern is
disallowed.

Note
When --include-foreign-data is specified, pg_dump does not check that the
foreign table is writable. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the results of a foreign
table dump can be successfully restored.

--inserts

Dump data as INSERT commands (rather than COPY). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making
dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases. Any error during reloading will cause only rows that are part of
the problematic INSERT to be lost, rather than the entire table contents. Note that the restore might fail altogether if you
have rearranged column order. The --column-inserts option is safe against column order changes, though even slower.

--load-via-partition-root

When dumping data for a table partition, make the COPY or INSERT statements target the root of the partitioning hierarchy
that contains it, rather than the partition itself. This causes the appropriate partition to be re-determined for each row when
the data is loaded. This may be useful when reloading data on a server where rows do not always fall into the same
partitions as they did on the original server. That could happen, for example, if the partitioning column is of type text and
the two systems have different definitions of the collation used to sort the partitioning column.

It is best not to use parallelism when restoring from an archive made with this option, because pg_restore will not know
exactly which partition(s) a given archive data item will load data into. This could result in inefficiency due to lock conflicts
between parallel jobs, or perhaps even reload failures due to foreign key constraints being set up before all the relevant
data is loaded.

--lock-wait-timeout=timeout

Do not wait forever to acquire shared table locks at the beginning of the dump. Instead fail if unable to lock a table within
the specified timeout. The timeout may be specified in any of the formats accepted by SET statement_timeout. (Allowed
formats vary depending on the server version you are dumping from, but an integer number of milliseconds is accepted by
all versions.)

--no-comments

Do not dump comments.

--no-publications

Do not dump publications.

--no-security-labels

Do not dump security labels.

--no-subscriptions

Do not dump subscriptions.

--no-sync

By default, pg_dump will wait for all files to be written safely to disk. This option causes pg_dump to return without waiting,
which is faster, but means that a subsequent operating system crash can leave the dump corrupt. Generally, this option is
useful for testing but should not be used when dumping data from production installation.

--no-synchronized-snapshots

This option allows running pg_dump -j against a pre-9.2 server, see the documentation of the -j parameter for more
details.

--no-tablespaces

Do not output commands to select tablespaces. With this option, all objects will be created in whichever tablespace is the
default during restore.

This option is ignored when emitting an archive (non-text) output file. For the archive formats, you can specify the option
when you call pg_restore.

--no-toast-compression

Do not output commands to set TOAST compression methods. With this option, all columns will be restored with the default
compression setting.

--no-unlogged-table-data

Do not dump the contents of unlogged tables. This option has no effect on whether or not the table definitions (schema) are
dumped; it only suppresses dumping the table data. Data in unlogged tables is always excluded when dumping from a
standby server.

--on-conflict-do-nothing

Add ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING to INSERT commands. This option is not valid unless --inserts, --column-inserts or -
-rows-per-insert is also specified.

--quote-all-identifiers

Force quoting of all identifiers. This option is recommended when dumping a database from a server whose PostgreSQL
major version is different from pg_dump's, or when the output is intended to be loaded into a server of a different major
version. By default, pg_dump quotes only identifiers that are reserved words in its own major version. This sometimes
results in compatibility issues when dealing with servers of other versions that may have slightly different sets of reserved
words. Using --quote-all-identifiers prevents such issues, at the price of a harder-to-read dump script.

--rows-per-insert=nrows

Dump data as INSERT commands (rather than COPY). Controls the maximum number of rows per INSERT command. The
value specified must be a number greater than zero. Any error during reloading will cause only rows that are part of the
problematic INSERT to be lost, rather than the entire table contents.

--section=sectionname

Only dump the named section. The section name can be pre-data, data, or post-data. This option can be specified more
than once to select multiple sections. The default is to dump all sections.

The data section contains actual table data, large-object contents, and sequence values. Post-data items include definitions
of indexes, triggers, rules, and constraints other than validated check constraints. Pre-data items include all other data
definition items.

--serializable-deferrable

Use a serializable transaction for the dump, to ensure that the snapshot used is consistent with later database states;
but do this by waiting for a point in the transaction stream at which no anomalies can be present, so that there isn't a risk of
the dump failing or causing other transactions to roll back with a serialization_failure. See Chapter 13 for more
information about transaction isolation and concurrency control.
 This option is not beneficial for a dump which is intended only for disaster recovery. It could be useful for a dump used to
load a copy of the database for reporting or other read-only load sharing while the original database continues to be
updated. Without it the dump may reflect a state which is not consistent with any serial execution of the transactions
eventually committed. For example, if batch processing techniques are used, a batch may show as closed in the dump
without all of the items which are in the batch appearing.

This option will make no difference if there are no read-write transactions active when pg_dump is started. If read-write
transactions are active, the start of the dump may be delayed for an indeterminate length of time. Once running,
performance with or without the switch is the same.

--snapshot=snapshotname

Use the specified synchronized snapshot when making a dump of the database (see Table 9.90 for more details).

This option is useful when needing to synchronize the dump with a logical replication slot (see Chapter 49) or with a
concurrent session.

In the case of a parallel dump, the snapshot name defined by this option is used rather than taking a new snapshot.

--strict-names

Require that each extension (-e/--extension), schema (-n/--schema) and table (-t/--table) qualifier match at least one
extension/schema/table in the database to be dumped. Note that if none of the extension/schema/table qualifiers find
matches, pg_dump will generate an error even without --strict-names.

This option has no effect on -N/--exclude-schema, -T/--exclude-table, or --exclude-table-data. An exclude

pattern failing to match any objects is not considered an error.

--use-set-session-authorization

Output SQL-standard SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION commands instead of ALTER OWNER commands to determine object
ownership. This makes the dump more standards-compatible, but depending on the history of the objects in the dump,
might not restore properly. Also, a dump using SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION will certainly require superuser privileges to
restore correctly, whereas ALTER OWNER requires lesser privileges.

-?

--help

Show help about pg_dump command line arguments, and exit.

The following command-line options control the database connection parameters.

-d dbname

--dbname=dbname

Specifies the name of the database to connect to. This is equivalent to specifying dbname as the first non-option argument
on the command line. The dbname can be a connection string. If so, connection string parameters will override any
conflicting command line options.

-h host

--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the
directory for the Unix domain socket. The default is taken from the PGHOST environment variable, if set, else a Unix domain
socket connection is attempted.

-p port

--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections. Defaults to
the PGPORT environment variable, if set, or a compiled-in default.

-U username

--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w

--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other
means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no
user is present to enter a password.
-W

--password

Force pg_dump to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since pg_dump will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password
authentication. However, pg_dump will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some
cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

--role=rolename

Specifies a role name to be used to create the dump. This option causes pg_dump to issue a SET ROLE rolename command
after connecting to the database. It is useful when the authenticated user (specified by -U) lacks privileges needed by
pg_dump, but can switch to a role with the required rights. Some installations have a policy against logging in directly as a
superuser, and use of this option allows dumps to be made without violating the policy.

Environment
PGDATABASE

PGHOST

PGOPTIONS

PGPORT

PGUSER

Default connection parameters.

PG_COLOR

Specifies whether to use color in diagnostic messages. Possible values are always, auto and never.

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 34.15).

Diagnostics
pg_dump internally executes SELECT statements. If you have problems running pg_dump, make sure you are able to select
information from the database using, for example, psql. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the
libpq front-end library will apply.

The database activity of pg_dump is normally collected by the statistics collector. If this is undesirable, you can set parameter
track_counts to false via PGOPTIONS or the ALTER USER command.

Notes
If your database cluster has any local additions to the template1 database, be careful to restore the output of pg_dump into a truly
empty database; otherwise you are likely to get errors due to duplicate definitions of the added objects. To make an empty database
without any local additions, copy from template0 not template1, for example:

CREATE DATABASE foo WITH TEMPLATE template0;

When a data-only dump is chosen and the option --disable-triggers is used, pg_dump emits commands to disable triggers on
user tables before inserting the data, and then commands to re-enable them after the data has been inserted. If the restore is
stopped in the middle, the system catalogs might be left in the wrong state.

The dump file produced by pg_dump does not contain the statistics used by the optimizer to make query planning decisions.
Therefore, it is wise to run ANALYZE after restoring from a dump file to ensure optimal performance; see Section 25.1.3 and
Section 25.1.6 for more information.

Because pg_dump is used to transfer data to newer versions of PostgreSQL, the output of pg_dump can be expected to load into
PostgreSQL server versions newer than pg_dump's version. pg_dump can also dump from PostgreSQL servers older than its own
version. (Currently, servers back to version 8.0 are supported.) However, pg_dump cannot dump from PostgreSQL servers newer than
its own major version; it will refuse to even try, rather than risk making an invalid dump. Also, it is not guaranteed that pg_dump's
output can be loaded into a server of an older major version — not even if the dump was taken from a server of that version. Loading
a dump file into an older server may require manual editing of the dump file to remove syntax not understood by the older server.
Use of the --quote-all-identifiers option is recommended in cross-version cases, as it can prevent problems arising from
varying reserved-word lists in different PostgreSQL versions.

When dumping logical replication subscriptions, pg_dump will generate CREATE SUBSCRIPTION commands that use the connect =
false option, so that restoring the subscription does not make remote connections for creating a replication slot or for initial table
copy. That way, the dump can be restored without requiring network access to the remote servers. It is then up to the user to
reactivate the subscriptions in a suitable way. If the involved hosts have changed, the connection information might have to be
changed. It might also be appropriate to truncate the target tables before initiating a new full table copy.

Examples
To dump a database called mydb into an SQL-script file:

$ pg_dump mydb > db.sql

To reload such a script into a (freshly created) database named newdb:

$ psql -d newdb -f db.sql

To dump a database into a custom-format archive file:

$ pg_dump -Fc mydb > db.dump

To dump a database into a directory-format archive:

$ pg_dump -Fd mydb -f dumpdir

To dump a database into a directory-format archive in parallel with 5 worker jobs:

$ pg_dump -Fd mydb -j 5 -f dumpdir

To reload an archive file into a (freshly created) database named newdb:

$ pg_restore -d newdb db.dump

To reload an archive file into the same database it was dumped from, discarding the current contents of that database:

$ pg_restore -d postgres --clean --create db.dump

To dump a single table named mytab:

$ pg_dump -t mytab mydb > db.sql

To dump all tables whose names start with emp in the detroit schema, except for the table named employee_log:

$ pg_dump -t 'detroit.emp*' -T detroit.employee_log mydb > db.sql

To dump all schemas whose names start with east or west and end in gsm, excluding any schemas whose names contain the word
test:

$ pg_dump -n 'east*gsm' -n 'west*gsm' -N '*test*' mydb > db.sql

The same, using regular expression notation to consolidate the switches:

$ pg_dump -n '(east|west)*gsm' -N '*test*' mydb > db.sql

To dump all database objects except for tables whose names begin with ts_:

$ pg_dump -T 'ts_*' mydb > db.sql

To specify an upper-case or mixed-case name in -t and related switches, you need to double-quote the name; else it will be folded to
lower case (see Patterns below). But double quotes are special to the shell, so in turn they must be quoted. Thus, to dump a single
table with a mixed-case name, you need something like

$ pg_dump -t "\"MixedCaseName\"" mydb > mytab.sql

See Also
pg_dumpall, pg_restore, psql
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