Normally, had their contents been deliberately encrypted we understand you could have used the latest quantum computing techniques to crack the code. But, since Dr. Shrum chose to use a data format that had been lost in the winds of time, decipherment proved impossible

Hmm... Let's see...

# cd /var/lib/postgres/data/pg_xlog
# strings 0000000000000011 | more
Serial
026324
Serial
5699K11353 cn 29L02
Roof fans Mfg
Greenheck
Roof fan serial
OOC23697
...
[download]

Looks like postgres (and, in my experience, most other databases) stores its data internally as plain text unless deliberately encrypted or compressed. Yeah, I'll give you that strings isn't likely to tell you the structure of the data, but getting at the content without going through the database engine is trivial.