How do you query all columns and all tables for a specific string

Re: How do you query all columns and all tables for a specific string

On 2010-03-22, Ryan Garvey <ryan(dot)garvey1(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> --001517448026efc884048265d16b
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I recently inhereted a database that I know nothing about that has hundreds
> of tables most of which have meaningless names, or at least to me. I am
> trying to find a table and column that holds a specific serial number. I
> have no idea what table or what column it would be stored in. Is it possible
> to search the entire database?

you could scan a dump of the for the serial number you want and work
back from there.

eg: assuming the serial you want is '1234237854'

pg_dump databasename | egrep  '^COPY|1234237854' | grep -B1 '1234237854'