As we support and help various customers with Postgresql related database issues, we still find users who are encoding their databases in SQL_ASCII. Perhaps there is a reason for this, if there is I haven’t figured it out yet.

In many cases, this eventually causes them problems and they end up having to switch from SQL_ASCII or some other encoding over to UTF8.

There may be more, but I know of two different ways of converting the encoding of the database to UTF8.

One way is

iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf-8 dump_file dump_file_recoded

The preferred way however is to use the -E option of the pg_dump command like this:

pg_dump -U postgres -W -E UTF8 -d pg_bench >pgbench.backup.

the -W command forces you to put in a password.

For more details on how to use the pg_dump command, here are the docs:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/app-pg_dump.html

Install Slony

Configure pgAdmin file/options and set the slony path

G:\Program Files (x86)\PostgreSQL\8.2\share

Create the master db

create the slave db

Initialize the master database. From the command line
pgbench.exe -U postgres -i pb

copy the master to the slave: from command line

pg_dump.exe -U postgres -h localhost pb |psql =U postgres -h localhost pbslave

Add a new cluster on the master

Add a node on the slave db

Add a path on both the master to the slave

host=localhost port=5432 dbname=pbslave user=postgres password=a

Add a path on the slave to the master

host=localhost port=5432 dbname=pb user=postgres password=a

Add a replication set on the master

Add accounts, branches, tellers

From the master Subscribe the slave

from the all tables set, right click subscribe set

Slony is configured, now we have to make windows start the engines correctly.

Create two text files in c:\slony

master.conf and slave.conf which look like this:

cluster_name='pgbench'
conn_info='dbname=pgbench user=postgres password=a'


From the command line register the engines

slon -addengine slony g:\slony\slave.conf
lon -addengine slony g:\slony\master.conf

if this hasn’t been done register slony as a service

slon -regservice slony

go to services and start slony

check event log for errors

if there are none then run a test from the master:

insert into accounts values (100001, 1, 0, 'test');

from the slave

select count(*) from accounts;