Thread: Re: Scheduled back up (fwd)

> > I'm sorry for *custom users*.
> > The project it's kind of cpanel.
> > A user can create and grant access for his databases.
> > And thx to pg_dump he can export & import databases.
> > So any user that have a db might want to export his data through his web
> > interface.
>
> Hmm.  Well, you could use a super-user account to do the dump.  It
> would have access to everything, and would only need one password.
> I'm wondering about security implications of that, however.

There is a significant difference between 'backups', which are more of
a DBA-level task and thus likely to be under the control of someone
who in a UNIX context has root access or at least DBA shell access, plus
the ability to schedule cron jobs, and 'exports' or 'imports', which
are something that an individual user may wish to do with his/her own
data independent of any database-wide backup schedules.

The existing protocols (pg_dump, etc) are largely geared towards
DBA-level backups, thus they tend to depend upon backend database
access and validation schemes, ie, through .pgpass or pg_hba.conf,
as opposed to frontend tools and user-level privilege grants.
--
Mike Nolan

nolan@celery.tssi.com writes:

> There is a significant difference between 'backups', which are more of
> a DBA-level task and thus likely to be under the control of someone
> who in a UNIX context has root access or at least DBA shell access, plus
> the ability to schedule cron jobs, and 'exports' or 'imports', which
> are something that an individual user may wish to do with his/her own
> data independent of any database-wide backup schedules.
>
> The existing protocols (pg_dump, etc) are largely geared towards
> DBA-level backups, thus they tend to depend upon backend database
> access and validation schemes, ie, through .pgpass or pg_hba.conf,
> as opposed to frontend tools and user-level privilege grants.

What's wrong with \copy in psql?

-Doug

> > The existing protocols (pg_dump, etc) are largely geared towards
> > DBA-level backups, thus they tend to depend upon backend database
> > access and validation schemes, ie, through .pgpass or pg_hba.conf,
> > as opposed to frontend tools and user-level privilege grants.
>
> What's wrong with \copy in psql?

\copy is fairly limited, especially when compared with the import/export
options in something like Access.  This is one of those situation where
the tools that Access provides runs circles around the tools that psql
provides.

Also, what about users who don't have psql access?

More importantly, backups are a back end task, data import/export
is more of a front end task.

If we want to appeal to a wider user base, we have to consider user tool
needs.
--
Mike Nolan