I'm looking to apply a unique constraint to a table such that field A
must be unique based on the date range from Field B to Field C.
This is for a rate based service model whereby, for example, $5 is worth
1 hour of Internet access. But next week, because of increased
competition, $5 is worth 2 hours of Internet access. I want to maintain
a history what $5 bought during a specific period of time.
create table rates ( effective_date AS timestamp, expiry_date AS timestamp, cost AS numeric (12,2),
access_timeAS integer (in minutes)
);
So for a given cost, there may not be a record where the effective date
of one record overlaps the expiry date of another (and vice versa).
Example record set (effective date, expiry date, cost, access_time):
2003-01-01 | 2003-01-15 | 5.00 | 60
2003-01-15 | infinity | 5.00 | 120
2003-01-01 | infinity | 1.00 | 10
An attempt to insert another 5.00 rate effective now would fail, because
a 5.00 rate exists that doesn't expire (i.e. the expiry date would have
to be updated to the effective date of the new record minus 1 second).
I can enforce this from the front end, but a db constraint would be great.
