Re: [GENERAL] Is it possible to define a constraint based on thevalues in other rows in the current table? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From vinny
Subject Re: [GENERAL] Is it possible to define a constraint based on thevalues in other rows in the current table?
Date
Msg-id 551e23c8567557c735604f88a3ce5a8e@xs4all.nl
Whole thread Raw
In response to [GENERAL] Is it possible to define a constraint based on the values in otherrows in the current table?  (Glen Huang <heyhgl@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-general
On 2017-07-19 13:37, Glen Huang wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to enforce that in a transaction, after a couple inserts &
> updates, a particular column has continuous values like 1, 2, 3, and
> never any gaps. Is it possible to do?
>
> I gave a concrete example here:
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45187113 didn't get any answers
> yet.
>
> Am I looking at the wrong direction? Should such feature be
> implemented with constraints?
>
> Thanks.

If the value is only used for sorting then the exact value doesn't
matter,
only that there are nu duplicates. 4,5,6 orders the exact same way as
1,2,3 or 500,540,615

You are guaranteed to get gaps anyway when you remove a record.

Personally I'd sooner create a trigger that generates a new value on
INSERT, and that
(if you *really* feel a need to) can fix gaps on DELETE and UPDATE


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