This really doesn’t help anyone else at the non-direct-SQL access level, but there are so many built in functions in PostgreSQL that have been optimized and created to backup entire databases and tables, and tons of python specific backup tools to backup your “whatever flavor” of SQL using python and a JDBC/ODBC connection.
With direct SQL access, the place I used to work could whip up a programmatic backup of all the tables and schemas, and a way to restore them from scratch in a few days**, using PHP no less. (The Database will do most of the heavy lifting, if you can tell it what to do)
** edit: a few days of programming. The backups took about 30 min to run, mostly because of I/O