> The second (SQL conformance) is high on my list; a few people (Chris &
> Stephen?) have been working hard to implement 'alter table add/etc
> constraint'. When this is stable, we will move pg_dump in that direction.
> But as of 7.1, there were still wrinkles in the the implementation that
> meant it was unsuitable for pg_dump. Not sure about the status in 7.2.
Well, the biggest thing I see on using alter table add constraint for
foreign keys is the expense involved if you do it after the tables are
populated. I chose the theoretical cleanliness of checking each row
using the code we had over the speed of doing a special check for the
alter table case, although I'm considering reversing that for 7.3 to make
the alter table more reasonable and make it possible for you to consider
doing it.
