Cross platform database table backup/restore

[gwhite]

Going through the CPAN list, from the names I can't find any modules that backup a DB table cross platform. (if I could just support mysql, pg, oracle and mssql I could live with that). I found a couple that backup a whole database, but I just need to backup a table, make some changes and restore if something goes badly. Any suggestions?

[MidLifeXis]

Is the table prebuilt on the $dest DB? Any concerns with encoding? Differing data types? Large amounts of space?

If not, why not something as simple as:

1. start transaction on $dest
2. Start cursor on $source (select * from source_table)
3. delete data on $dest (delete from backup_table)
4. insert each row from $source to $dest (get from $source, save to $dest)
5. end transaction on $dest

This won't be terribly fast if it is a large table. There may also be better tools for this (export to a CSV, import from CSV, for example, given the right format of the data).

Are there any special constraints on your problem that stop you from using the straightforward solution?

[gwhite]

We are giving the client the option to merge (but not add) some data into the database

We want to take a snapshot of the table premerge, if they discover something is awry (sometimes days and several updates later) we want the premerge data. Some of our clients have 100,000+ records in each of 5-6 tables. Encoding and such isn't an issue, we just support various DB platforms, so I was hoping there was a module that let me do something like a $dbh->backup($mytable_name, $myholding_file); & a $dbh->restore($myholding_file, $mytable_name); (and yes I know if updates have been made we may need to do more, but this would be enough 75% of the time)

[gwhite]

And the export/import to/from CSV or XML or SQL would work, just looking to see if there was a cross platform tool that did this amongst some of the cryptic DBIx module names....