pglogical restore from Google AlloyDB fails due to "google_columnar_engine" dependency

[bnol]

Description

I'm attempting data migration from AlloyDB to standard PostgreSQL using pglogical. My AlloyDB database contains the AlloyDB-specific "google_columnar_engine" extension.

During a pg_restore of my AlloyDB backup, followed by pglogical replication, I encounter the error "extension "google_columnar_engine" is not available".

I've verified that none of my application's tables, views, or functions directly use features of this extension except for the views that are created by AlloyDB in the public schema. However, removing the extension nor the views from AlloyDB is not possible due to database permissions.

Challenges:

• My database backup is very large (2TB), making direct editing of the dump file impractical.
• AlloyDB's internal views seem to depend on this extension, preventing backup modifications without deeper intervention.

Questions:

1. Exclude specific view objects during the replication process?
2. Configure pglogical to ignore extension-related statements during restore?

Environment

• pglogical version: postgresql-16-pglogical
• AlloyDB version (if known): PostgreSQL 14 compatible
• PostgreSQL version (target): 16.2

Additional Notes:

• I'm open to workarounds or alternative strategies.
• I understand this might be a feature request rather than an immediate bug.

[bnol]

solved by setting synchronize_structure to false and synchronize the schema manually :)