Re: [HACKERS] Inherited constraints and search paths (was Re: - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: [HACKERS] Inherited constraints and search paths (was Re:
Date
Msg-id 25273.1116604306@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: [HACKERS] Inherited constraints and search paths (was Re:  (Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>)
Responses Re: [HACKERS] Inherited constraints and search paths  (Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>)
Re: [HACKERS] Inherited constraints and search paths (was  (Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>)
List pgsql-general
Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> Doing anything to restrict dropping of inherited constraints seems like
> wasted effort and potentially annoying anyhow.

Uh, why?  Arguably the constraints are as much part of the parent table
definition as the columns themselves.  If you had "check (f1 > 0)" in
the definition of a table, wouldn't you be pretty surprised to select
from it and find rows with f1 < 0?

regression=# create table parent(f1 int check (f1 > 0));
CREATE TABLE
regression=# create table child() inherits(parent);
CREATE TABLE
regression=# alter table child drop constraint parent_f1_check;
ALTER TABLE
regression=# insert into child values(-1);
INSERT 0 1
regression=# select * from parent;
 f1
----
 -1
(1 row)

I think a good argument can be made that the above behavior is a bug,
and that the ALTER command should have been rejected.  We've gone to
great lengths to make sure you can't ALTER a child table to make it
incompatible with the parent in terms of the column names and types;
shouldn't this be true of check constraints as well?

            regards, tom lane

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