I want to get the Database creation date in POSTGRESQL.
My version is 9.3.4 running on Ubuntu 14.04.
Can I do it with a select statement or can I do it with access to the server?
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I don't think this is possible.user330315– user3303152014-07-17 14:27:53 +00:00Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 14:27
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Perhaps related with stackoverflow.com/questions/3211769/… ?Houari– Houari2014-07-17 14:41:09 +00:00Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 14:41
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1Maybe something like this can get it? postgresql.org/message-id/… and raghavt.blogspot.com/2011/09/…Kuberchaun– Kuberchaun2014-07-17 14:43:31 +00:00Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 14:43
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4 Answers
I completely agree with Craig Ringer (excellent answer!)... but for my purposes , this is good enough:
SELECT (pg_stat_file('base/'||oid ||'/PG_VERSION')).modification, datname FROM pg_database;
Simple and clean (but superuser).
3 Comments
Gurupreet Singh Bhatia
this is modification date on database or it can treat as creation date too?
Bernardo Jerez
According the documentation: "pg_stat_file returns a record containing the file size, last accessed time stamp, last modified time stamp, last file status change time stamp (Unix platforms only), file creation time stamp (Windows only), and a boolean indicating if it is a directory. " .... so only if you are in a Windows enviroment you can use the "creation" attribute. In my linux machine the "modification" attribute is good enough to get a pseudo creation date.
Fabrice Chapuis
But does not work if you clone the instance
There is no built-in record of the PostgreSQL database creation time in the system. All approaches that rely on file system creation/modification times can produce wrong answers.
For example, if you pg_basebackup a replica node then fail over to it, the creation time will appear to be the time the replica was created. pg_basebackup doesn't preserve file creation/modification times because they're generally not considered relevant for operation of the database system.
The only reliable way to get the database creation time is to create a 1-row table with the creation time in it when you create the database, then set permissions / add a trigger so it rejects updates.
If you don't mind the risk of a wrong answer where the creation time is reported as being much newer than it really was, you can look at the timestamp of the base/[dboid]/PG_VERSION file. @Bob showed a useful way to do that.
Comments
Also alternative solution:
- Find database OID:
postgres=# select oid,datname from pg_database where datname='bars_paidserv'; -[ RECORD 1 ]---------- oid | 5137290 datname | bars_paidserv
- Go to database datatfiles (you can find your directory by executing
show data_directory):
cd /var/lib/postgresql/9.6/main/base
- list PG_VERSION file in your OID:
postgres@test-rp:~/9.6/main/base$ ls -l 5137290/PG_VERSION -rw------- 1 postgres postgres 4 Jan 29 12:34 5137290/PG_VERSION
i.e. my database bars_paidserv with OID 5137290 was created on Jan 29.
Comments
You can check in postgres log if ddl trace is activated and you have enough retention. With a grep on "CREATE DATABASE"