There is now pg_dumpbinary 2.16 for PostreSQL available for download. The pg_dumpbinary command converts the PostgreSQL database into a binary format, which the pg_restorebinary command then uses to restore the database. It is helpful in situations where bytea cannot be exported because of the size of the escape/hex output, or when a custom type stores \0 internally but exports data as char/varchar/text.

pg_dumpbinary v2.16 released

pg_dumpbinary dumps a PostgreSQL database to a binary format. The resulting dump must be restored using pg_restorebinary, which is provided.

This release fixes data restoration for tables where schema or table names contain the dollar sign ($).

pg_dumpbinary is useful when:

• You have bytea that can not be exported by pg_dump because the total size of the escape/hex output exceeds 1Gb.
• You have custom type that stores \0 internally in bytea but data are exported by pg_dump as char/varchar/text. In this case pg_dump truncates all data after the first '\0', resulting in data loss.
• Other cases where a binary output format is useful.

In these kinds of cases pg_dumpbinary helps by dumping the PostgreSQL database in a binary format. In all other cases the pg_dump/pg_restore commands distributed with PostgreSQL are preferred.

See the documentation for a more complete description of available features.

pg_dumpbinary v2.16 released