Ask HN: Any good tools to pgdump multi tenant database?

3•polishdude20•8mo ago

Just joined a new company and they run a multi tenant database in postgres where each tenant is distinguished by their account ID. I'd like to be able to dump the data of a single account to my local instance to assist in debugging.

Problem is, many of the entities do not include an account ID. For example, a user can have an account ID but a user post will not but it will be tied to a user ID.

Also foreign keys aren't really implemented fully.

Are there any tools or techniques that could help make this process easier to do?

Comments

tudorg•8mo ago

You can try with data subsetting tools, a few that I know are: greenmask, jailer, tonic condenser, and I think there are more. They are not exactly for your use case, but might help you a bit. The problem is most of these tools can walk foreign keys, but only in one directions.

Also, since you said FK are not fully implemented, then there just won't be enough information for them to work with. So you can either work on fixing the foreign keys or have more complex scripts.

polishdude20•8mo ago

Thanks for the suggestions!

Yeah due to the unavailability of FK's, I'd have to somehow map certain ID columns to the tables they're for, accounting for slight naming convention differences.

woyten•8mo ago

In case you don’t have FKs you could specify virtual foreign keys in Greenmask.

Check out docs for details

https://docs.greenmask.io/latest/database_subset/#virtual-re...

abhisek•8mo ago

This is poor design. Multi-tenant data model design must have a tenant or segment ID for every tenant segmented tables. While it may not be a problem initially but as the business grows, you may need to move tenant data to separate DBs or even different regions based on compliance requirements. IMHO it is a good idea to run DB migrations and have a tenant ID populated in all tenant segmented tables

polishdude20•8mo ago

Oh yes I agree with you. It may become a big push to convince my org to do that

Ask HN: Opus 4.6 ignoring instructions, how to use 4.5 in Claude Code instead?

Ask HN: Anyone Using a Mac Studio for Local AI/LLM?

Ask HN: Ideas for small ways to make the world a better place

Ask HN: Non AI-obsessed tech forums

Ask HN: 10 months since the Llama-4 release: what happened to Meta AI?

Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2026)

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2026)

LLMs are powerful, but enterprises are deterministic by nature

AI Regex Scientist: A self-improving regex solver

Tell HN: Another round of Zendesk email spam

Ask HN: Non-profit, volunteers run org needs CRM. Is Odoo Community a good sol.?

Ask HN: Is Connecting via SSH Risky?

Ask HN: Has your whole engineering team gone big into AI coding? How's it going?

Ask HN: Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules?

Ask HN: How does ChatGPT decide which websites to recommend?

Ask HN: Mem0 stores memories, but doesn't learn user patterns

Kernighan on Programming

Ask HN: Why LLM providers sell access instead of consulting services?

Ask HN: Is it just me or are most businesses insane?

Ask HN: What is the most complicated Algorithm you came up with yourself?

Ask HN: Anyone Seeing YT ads related to chats on ChatGPT?

Ask HN: Does global decoupling from the USA signal comeback of the desktop app?

We built a serverless GPU inference platform with predictable latency

Ask HN: Does a good "read it later" app exist?

Ask HN: Have you been fired because of AI?

Ask HN: Anyone have a "sovereign" solution for phone calls?

Ask HN: Cheap laptop for Linux without GUI (for writing)

GitHub Actions Have "Major Outage"

Ask HN: Has anybody moved their local community off of Facebook groups?

Ask HN: OpenClaw users, what is your token spend?