# PostgreSQL SQL Dump

Driver short name

PGDump

Driver built-in by default

This driver is built-in by default

This write-only driver implements support for generating a SQL dump file that can later be injected into a live PostgreSQL instance. It supports PostgreSQL extended with the PostGIS geometries.

This driver is very similar to the PostGIS shp2pgsql utility.

Most creation options are shared with the regular PostgreSQL driver.

Starting with OGR 1.11, the PGDump driver supports creating tables with multiple PostGIS geometry columns (following RFC 41 : Support for multiple geometry fields in OGR)

## Driver capabilities

Supports Create()

This driver supports the `GDALDriver::Create()` operation

Supports Georeferencing

This driver supports georeferencing

Supports VirtualIO

This driver supports virtual I/O operations (/vsimem/, etc.)

## Creation options

### Dataset Creation Options

- LINEFORMAT: By default files are created with the line termination conventions of the local platform (CR/LF on win32 or LF on all other systems). This may be overridden through use of the LINEFORMAT layer creation option which may have a value of CRLF (DOS format) or LF (Unix format).

### Layer Creation Options

- GEOM_TYPE: The GEOM_TYPE layer creation option can be set to one of “geometry” or “geography” (PostGIS >= 1.5) to force the type of geometry used for a table. “geometry” is the default value.

- LAUNDER: This may be “YES” to force new fields created on this layer to have their field names “laundered” into a form more compatible with PostgreSQL. This converts to lower case and converts some special characters like “-” and “#” to “_”. If “NO” exact names are preserved. The default value is “YES”. If enabled the table (layer) name will also be laundered.

- PRECISION: This may be “YES” to force new fields created on this layer to try and represent the width and precision information, if available using NUMERIC(width,precision) or CHAR(width) types. If “NO” then the types FLOAT8, INTEGER and VARCHAR will be used instead. The default is “YES”.

- DIM={2,3,XYM,XYZM}: Control the dimension of the layer. Important to set to 2 for 2D layers with PostGIS 1.0+ as it has constraints on the geometry dimension during loading.

- GEOMETRY_NAME: Set name of geometry column in new table. If omitted it defaults to wkb_geometry for GEOM_TYPE=geometry, or the_geog for GEOM_TYPE=geography.

- SCHEMA: Set name of schema for new table. Using the same layer name in different schemas is supported, but not in the public schema and others.

- CREATE_SCHEMA: (OGR >= 1.8.1) To be used in combination with SCHEMA. Set to ON by default so that the CREATE SCHEMA instruction is emitted. Turn to OFF to prevent CREATE SCHEMA from being emitted.

- SPATIAL_INDEX=NONE/GIST/SPGIST/BRIN (starting with GDAL 2.4) or YES/NO for earlier versions and backward compatibility: Set to GIST (GDAL >=2.4, or YES for earlier versions) by default. Creates a spatial index (GiST) on the geometry column to speed up queries (Has effect only when PostGIS is available). Set to NONE (GDAL >= 2.4, or FALSE for earlier verions) to disable. BRIN is only available with PostgreSQL >= 9.4 and PostGIS >= 2.3. SPGIST is only available with PostgreSQL >= 11 and PostGIS >= 2.5

- TEMPORARY: Set to OFF by default. Creates a temporary table instead of a permanent one.

- UNLOGGED: (From GDAL 2.0) Set to OFF by default. Whether to create the table as a unlogged one. Unlogged tables are only supported since PostgreSQL 9.1, and GiST indexes used for spatial indexing since PostgreSQL 9.3.

- WRITE_EWKT_GEOM: Set to OFF by default. Turn to ON to write EWKT geometries instead of HEX geometries. This option will have no effect if PG_USE_COPY environment variable is to YES.

- CREATE_TABLE: Set to ON by default so that tables are recreated if necessary. Turn to OFF to disable this and use existing table structure.

- DROP_TABLE=ON/OFF/IF_EXISTS: (OGR >= 1.8.1) Set to ON so that tables are destroyed before being recreated. Set to OFF to prevent DROP TABLE from being emitted. Set to IF_EXISTS (default in GDAL 2.0) in order DROP TABLE IF EXISTS to be emitted (needs PostgreSQL >= 8.2)

- SRID: Set the SRID of the geometry. Defaults to -1, unless a SRS is associated with the layer. In the case, if the EPSG code is mentioned, it will be used as the SRID. (Note: the spatial_ref_sys table must be correctly populated with the specified SRID)

- NONE_AS_UNKNOWN: (From GDAL 1.9.0) Can bet set to TRUE to force non-spatial layers (wkbNone) to be created as spatial tables of type GEOMETRY (wkbUnknown), which was the behaviour prior to GDAL 1.8.0. Defaults to NO, in which case a regular table is created and not recorded in the PostGIS geometry_columns table.

- FID: (From GDAL 1.9.0) Name of the FID column to create. Defaults to ‘ogc_fid’.

- FID64: (From GDAL 2.0) This may be “TRUE” to create a FID column that can support 64 bit identifiers. The default value is “FALSE”.

- EXTRACT_SCHEMA_FROM_LAYER_NAME: (From GDAL 1.9.0) Can be set to NO to avoid considering the dot character as the separator between the schema and the table name. Defaults to YES.

- COLUMN_TYPES: (From GDAL 1.10) A list of strings of format field_name=pg_field_type (separated by comma) that should be use when CreateField() is invoked on them. This will override the default choice that OGR would have made. This can for example be used to create a column of type HSTORE.

- POSTGIS_VERSION: (From GDAL 1.9.0) Can be set to 2.0 for PostGIS 2.0 compatibility. Starting with GDAL 2.0, it is important to set it correctly when dealing with non-linear geometry types. Starting with GDAL 2.1, can be POSTGIS_VERSION=2.2 is specially dealt with to correctly export POINT EMPTY geometries

- DESCRIPTION (From GDAL 2.1) Description string to put in the pg_description system table. The description can also be written with SetMetadataItem(“DESCRIPTION”, description_string). Descriptions are preserved by default by ogr2ogr, unless the -nomd option is used.

### Environment variables

- PG_USE_COPY: This may be “YES” for using COPY for inserting data to Postgresql. COPY is significantly faster than INSERT.

### VSI Virtual File System API support

(Some features below might require OGR >= 1.9.0)

The driver supports rwriting to files managed by VSI Virtual File System API, which include “regular” files, as well as files in the /vsizip/, /vsigzip/ domains.

Writing to /dev/stdout or /vsistdout/ is also supported.

### Example

- Simple translation of a shapefile into PostgreSQL into a file abc.sql. The table ‘abc’ will be created with the features from abc.shp and attributes from abc.dbf. The SRID is specified. PG_USE_COPY is set to YES to improve the performance.

      % ogr2ogr --config PG_USE_COPY YES -f PGDump abc.sql abc.shp -lco SRID=32631

- Pipe the output of the PGDump driver into the psql utility.

      % ogr2ogr --config PG_USE_COPY YES -f PGDump /vsistdout/ abc.shp | psql -d my_dbname -f -

### See Also

- OGR PostgreSQL driver Page

- PostgreSQL Home Page

- PostGIS

- PostGIS / OGR Wiki Examples Page