Every business, no matter the size, have databases. Databases contain some of the most important business information. This information ranges from anything that is critical to business processes all the way through to customer and staff personal details. When it comes to databases, it is vital to ensure that they are backed up on a regular basis. Database backup is important for numerous reasons such as system failure, security threats or change of personnel.

There are two distinctive types of backups for PostgreSQL, physical or logical. Both these types of backup have their advantages and disadvantages, as well as a few warnings. Here is a quick look at the two and what they offer.

Physical backup

Physical backup involves snapshots of files that contains the database. The one downside of a physical PostgreSQL backup database is the lack of consistency. To be sure of consistency for archiving and point-in-time recovery is to ensure that you either complete the entire transaction or maintain the database unchanged.

It is usual for database files to alter during a backup session but some of the changes will be unsafe and can cause the creation of an inconsistent snapshot. A PostgreSQL will make sure that no unsafe variations to the file during a backup. However, it is important to remember that a physical backup cannot be done correctly without the filesystem-level snapshot and the WAL segments. All these elements make up the ‘base backup.’

Logical backups

Logical backups, or SQL dumps, have an SQL statement that can create the database and populate it with data. The SQL dump will always reflect a steady state of the database. The consistent state is due to the process following mirror semantics of the previous dumbs.

The PostgreSQL backup is not complicated, though it has to follow a simple sense of logic and go through all the tables to fetch all the rows of the various schema. Maintain the logic order is important as it goes through all the relations during the backup.

Automatic backups

There are loads of applications that can assist with setting up a scheduled backup. Scheduled backups of databases are processes that are automatically programmed without any user or extra hardware intervention. The benefit of the PostgreSQL automatic backup is that the process can run without human interaction, which means that you can run the backup after hours and on weekends. After hours backup is not possible with any of the manual processes. PostgreSQL backup database will benefit greatly from an automated process as it will mean downtime due to backup processes.

Irrespective of the method you choose. A regular, daily or nightly backup of the SQL database is vital. Without the proper PostgreSQL backup database in place, you run the risk of losing critical data. A complete backup process will ensure that you are prepared for the worst.