# Theme-Component v Plugin: What's the difference

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/theme-component-v-plugin-whats-the-difference/153951
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [June 5, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/theme-component-v-plugin-whats-the-difference/153951 "2020-06-05T14:56:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 13

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### Author: ![EricGT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f1d935/32.png) [@EricGT](https://meta.discourse.org/u/EricGT)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2020, 10:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/theme-component-v-plugin-whats-the-difference/153951/13 "2020-06-05T22:44:23Z")

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> [@JQ331](#):
>
> What database do you mean?

When Discourse is installed per the [standard](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md) it is in a Docker [container](https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker). Persistence of data is achieved using a PostgreSQL database.

See: [Data Explorer Plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/data-explorer-plugin/32566)

If you have admin rights you can grab one of the backups, it is SQL compressed into a tar.gz file. You can use the SQL to reload the data into another PostgreSQL database and do even more.

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