OT: database advice

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 23:08:39 +0200,
  Duncan Lithgow <duncan at lithgow-schmidt.dk> wrote:
> Okay, so different db's store data differently, fair enough, how can i
> save a copy of the db contents though, and in what format should I do
> that.

What are you trying to protect against? Normal practice is to either
do consistant snapshots of the live database using database specific
tools or shut the database down and do a file system backup.

> I believe it can be done with a csv list, but that sounds a bit foolish
> to me. There must be a better way.

Actually csv (or tsv) is a reasonable way to represent the data in a
relational database. This won't capture information about the structure
of the database. This would include datatypes of the data, constraints and
triggers.