PGLoader

pgloader is a data loading tool for PostgreSQL, using the COPY command.

Its main advantage over just using COPY or \copy, and over using a Foreign Data Wrapper, is its transaction behaviour, where pgloader will keep a separate file of rejected data, but continue trying to copy good data in your database.

The default PostgreSQL behaviour is transactional, which means that any erroneous line in the input data (file or remote database) will stop the entire bulk load for the table.

pgloader also implements data reformatting, a typical example of that being the transformation of MySQL datestamps 0000-00-00 and 0000-00-00 00:00:00 to PostgreSQL NULL value (because our calendar never had a year zero).

Versioning

pgloader version 1.x is quite old and was devleoped in TCL. When faced with maintaining that code, the new emerging development team (hi!) picked python instead because that made sense at the time. So pgloader version 2.x was written in python.

The current version of pgloader is the 3.x series, which is written in Common Lisp for better development flexibility, runtime performance, and support of real threading.

The versioning is now following the Emacs model, where any X.0 release number means you're using a development version (alpha, beta, or release candidate). The next stable versions are going to be 3.1 then 3.2 etc.

When using a development snapshot rather than a released version the version number includes the git hash (in its abbreviated form):

• pgloader version "3.0.99"

  Release candidate 9 for pgloader version 3.1, with a git tag named v3.0.99 so that it's easy to checkout the same sources as the released code.

• pgloader version "3.0.fecae2c"

  Development snapshot again git hash fecae2c. It's possible to have the same sources on another setup with using the git command git checkout fecae2c.

• pgloader version "3.1.0"

  Stable release.

LICENCE

pgloader is available under The PostgreSQL Licence.

INSTALL

pgloader is now a Common Lisp program, tested using the SBCL (>= 1.1.14) and Clozure CL implementations with Quicklisp.

$ apt-get install sbcl unzip libsqlite3-dev make curl gawk freetds-dev libzip-dev
$ cd /path/to/pgloader
$ make pgloader
$ ./build/bin/pgloader --help

You can also fetch pre-made binary packages at pgloader.io.

Testing a new feature

Being a Common Lisp program, pgloader is able to upgrade itself at run time, and provides the command-line option --self-upgrade that just does that.

If you want to test the current repository version (or any checkout really), it's possible to clone the sources then load them with an older pgloader release:

$ /usr/bin/pgloader --version
pgloader version "3.0.99"
compiled with SBCL 1.1.17

$ git clone https://github.com/dimitri/pgloader.git /tmp/pgloader
$ /usr/bin/pgloader --self-upgrade /tmp/pgloader --version
Self-upgrading from sources at "/tmp/pgloader/"
pgloader version "3.0.fecae2c"
compiled with SBCL 1.1.17

Here, the code from the git clone will be used at run-time. Self-upgrade is done first, then the main program entry point is called again with the new coded loaded in.

Please note that the binary file (/usr/bin/pgloader or ./build/bin/pgloader) is not modified in-place, so that if you want to run the same upgraded code again you will have to use the --self-upgrade command again. It might warrant for an option rename before 3.1.0 stable release.

The pgloader.lisp script

Now you can use the #! script or build a self-contained binary executable file, as shown below.

./pgloader.lisp --help

Each time you run the pgloader command line, it will check that all its dependencies are installed and compiled and if that's not the case fetch them from the internet and prepare them (thanks to Quicklisp). So please be patient while that happens and make sure we can actually connect and download the dependencies.

Build Self-Contained binary file

The Makefile target pgloader knows how to produce a Self Contained Binary file for pgloader, named pgloader.exe:

$ make pgloader

By default, the Makefile uses SBCL to compile your binary image, though it's possible to also build using CCL.

$ make CL=ccl pgloader

Note that the Makefile uses the --compress-core option when using SBCL, that should be enabled in your local copy of SBCL. If that's not the case, it's probably because you did compile and install SBCL yourself, so that you have a decently recent version to use. Then you need to compile it with the --with-sb-core-compression option.

You can also remove the --compress-core option that way:

$ make COMPRESS_CORE=no pgloader

The --compress-core is unique to SBCL, so not used when CC is different from the sbcl value.

The make pgloader command when successful outputs a ./build/bin/pgloader file for you to use.

Usage

Give as many command files that you need to pgloader:

$ ./build/bin/pgloader --help
$ ./build/bin/pgloader <file.load>

See the documentation file pgloader.1.md for details. You can compile that file into a manual page or an HTML page thanks to the ronn application:

$ apt-get install ruby-ronn
$ make docs