.tip

A plain SQL dump restores in one thread, in order, all or nothing. The custom format is compressed, restores in parallel, and lets you pick the tables you want.

pg_dump --format=custom --file=app.dump app
pg_restore --jobs=8 --dbname=app_copy app.dump
pg_restore --list app.dump | grep orders

The one time you need to restore a single table from last night's backup, this is the difference between two minutes and an afternoon.