We need to clarify what reasons you might have to dump a database. One is for disaster recovery, the other is for supporting ongoing development. For many, ma

We need to clarify what reasons you might have to dump a database. One is for disaster recovery, the other is for supporting ongoing development. For many, many PostgreSQL users in need of basic disaster recovery, a simple pg_dump of the entire database is sufficient and reliable for backup. That's not to say that these are sophisticated users, some are small manufacturing companies, some are small retail business, etc, etc. Anything more than a simple nightly dump is more (sometimes) than their staffs can handle. I think anyone on a more sophisticated basis would be using archive logs which are also a mix of DDL and data by their nature... moving into replication which isn't so different). In a disaster recovery scenario, definition of the database (DDL) can and really should be treated the same as data. If I try to recover DDL from one safe-keeping repository and the data from another, the likelihood that I'll encounter a mismatch and not be able to recover is greater, one missed commit in an important DDL change could mean I can't restore data aware of the uncommitted code. (Most) DDL and data are statefully co-dependent and putting them on separate a separate footing is unnecessary risk. Now managing DDL and, say, test data during software development is a different matter. I want to version control my DDL (there are a number of good techniques for this), while not fully retaining data, and certainly not doing so in source control. In this case I do want that separation so that I don't pollute my DDL files with data (which would overwhelm them), with the exception, perhaps, of certain kinds of seed data needed for bootstrapping the database (if applicable). Mind you, I wouldn't use pg_dump for getting the DDL but would rather use one of the purpose build database versioning tools to manage code as I want to organize it and before putting it in the database.