PostgreSQL export

Data export is often used by database administrators and users as a means of migration or backup process. For example, a remote enterprise unit needs a periodic data transfer from the central PostgreSQL server to a local Access database. In this case, information from the database table is transformed to any of the popular file formats (like CSV or XML), and then these files are imported to the target database system or used as backup data storage. However, PostgreSQL data export may be needed not only for migration or backup purposes, but also for the generation of ready to use HTML pages, Excel worksheets or Word documents containing information from database tables.

It may appen that remote workers need some particular information from enterprise databases, but they are unable to connect to PostgreSQL database server for some reasons, therefore, it would be a good idea to prepare required data in advance, e.g. in XLS or OpenDocument (ODS) files. Web server administrators often need the ability to periodically export some information from PostgreSQL database into files of a common format like PDF or RTF, for example to automate the process of price list generation and so on.

PG Data Export Tool Review

In this article we would like to review EMS Data Export for PostgreSQL – a helpful database utility intended to quickly export data from PostgreSQL databases to any of a great number of available formats, including MS Excel, MS Access, MS Word, RTF, HTML, PDF, XML, TXT, DBF, CSV, ODF, SYLK, DIF, LaTeX, SQL, Clipboard and others. The tool supports Unicode data, works with the latest PostgreSQL versions and is capable of exporting data from several database tables, views or queries at the same time. The intuitive user-friendly wizard interface allows you to select PostgreSQL database table fields to export or write SQL queries whose results should be exported, set individual parameters for each output file in accordance with its format, save export options to the configuration file for future use and much more. So you simply select the source PostgreSQL table or SQL query, specify the target file format, change some export settings, if necessary, and the program creates files in the required format with the required content derived from the database data.

As noted above, EMS Data Export for PostgreSQL provides the ability to define individual parameters for each type of the output file. For instance, you can select a destination server (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, DB2, etc.) when exporting to SQL format and the result script will be generated in accordance with specifications of the target server. For Excel files you can specify such parameters as font, borders, filling color and method, etc. for each entity (such as data field, header, footer, caption, data, hyperlink and so on). The options for XML files include the possibility of customizing such parameters as document encoding, XML type and the necessity of XSD schema creation. Additionally, you can specify the header and footer text for the result file. This text will appear before and after the data respectively in the result file.

Very often database administrators are faced with the impossibility to connect to a PostgreSQL server located at a remote site hosting because of the security reasons. To solve such issues you can take advantage of SSH and HTTP tunneling supported by EMS Data Export for PostgreSQL. SSH tunneling provides confidentiality and integrity of data over the network connection to PostgreSQL server as well as allows access the server that is located behind a firewall. HTTP tunneling allows use a Web server as an intermediary in the data exchange process with the directly inaccessible PostgreSQL server. Thus, using these opportunities will allow you to connect to a remote database and perform export of the necessary information.

EMS Data Export for PostgreSQL allows you to store its configurations in external files if you need to repeat data export process many times. Moreover, the program installation package contains a special command-line utility that can perform the export process according to the time schedule and using the previously saved configuration. This makes it easy to automate the task of periodic information export from PostgreSQL server to data files.

The reviewed utility for PostgreSQL data export can be used quite autonomously. But if you need the solution for such typical DBA tasks like data and server administration, migration, database import and comparison it is necessary to use the integrated environment. EMS SQL Management Studio for PostgreSQL is the set of tools that unites DBA must-have database utilities in one powerful and easy-to-use environment.