Description

CREATE PUBLICATION adds a new publication into the current database. The publication name must be distinct from the name of any existing publication in the current database.

A publication is essentially a group of tables whose data changes are intended to be replicated through logical replication. See Section 30.1 for details about how publications fit into the logical replication setup.

Parameters

When specifying a parameter of type boolean, the = value part can be omitted, which is equivalent to specifying TRUE.

Notes

If FOR TABLE, FOR ALL TABLES or FOR TABLES IN SCHEMA are not specified, then the publication starts out with an empty set of tables. That is useful if tables or schemas are to be added later.

The creation of a publication does not start replication. It only defines a grouping and filtering logic for future subscribers.

To create a publication, the invoking user must have the CREATE privilege for the current database. (Of course, superusers bypass this check.)

To add a table to a publication, the invoking user must have ownership rights on the table. The FOR ALL TABLES and FOR TABLES IN SCHEMA clauses require the invoking user to be a superuser.

The tables added to a publication that publishes UPDATE and/or DELETE operations must have REPLICA IDENTITY defined. Otherwise those operations will be disallowed on those tables.

Any column list must include the REPLICA IDENTITY columns in order for UPDATE or DELETE operations to be published. There are no column list restrictions if the publication publishes only INSERT operations.

A row filter expression (i.e., the WHERE clause) must contain only columns that are covered by the REPLICA IDENTITY, in order for UPDATE and DELETE operations to be published. For publication of INSERT operations, any column may be used in the WHERE expression. The row filter allows simple expressions that don't have user-defined functions, user-defined operators, user-defined types, user-defined collations, non-immutable built-in functions, or references to system columns.

The row filter on a table becomes redundant if FOR TABLES IN SCHEMA is specified and the table belongs to the referred schema.

For published partitioned tables, the row filter for each partition is taken from the published partitioned table if the publication parameter publish_via_partition_root is true, or from the partition itself if it is false (the default). See Section 30.3 for details about row filters. Similarly, for published partitioned tables, the column list for each partition is taken from the published partitioned table if the publication parameter publish_via_partition_root is true, or from the partition itself if it is false.

For an INSERT ... ON CONFLICT command, the publication will publish the operation that results from the command. Depending on the outcome, it may be published as either INSERT or UPDATE, or it may not be published at all.

For a MERGE command, the publication will publish an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE for each row inserted, updated, or deleted.

ATTACHing a table into a partition tree whose root is published using a publication with publish_via_partition_root set to true does not result in the table's existing contents being replicated.

COPY ... FROM commands are published as INSERT operations.

DDL operations are not published.

The WHERE clause expression is executed with the role used for the replication connection.

Examples

Create a publication that publishes all changes in two tables:

CREATE PUBLICATION mypublication FOR TABLE users, departments;

Create a publication that publishes all changes from active departments:

CREATE PUBLICATION active_departments FOR TABLE departments WHERE (active IS TRUE);

Create a publication that publishes all changes in all tables:

CREATE PUBLICATION alltables FOR ALL TABLES;

Create a publication that only publishes INSERT operations in one table:

CREATE PUBLICATION insert_only FOR TABLE mydata
    WITH (publish = 'insert');

Create a publication that publishes all changes for tables users, departments and all changes for all the tables present in the schema production:

CREATE PUBLICATION production_publication FOR TABLE users, departments, TABLES IN SCHEMA production;

Create a publication that publishes all changes for all the tables present in the schemas marketing and sales:

CREATE PUBLICATION sales_publication FOR TABLES IN SCHEMA marketing, sales;

Create a publication that publishes all changes for table users, but replicates only columns user_id and firstname:

CREATE PUBLICATION users_filtered FOR TABLE users (user_id, firstname);

Compatibility

CREATE PUBLICATION is a Postgres Pro extension.

See Also