Re: pgsql: Allow UNIQUE indexes on partitioned tables - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From David G. Johnston
Subject Re: pgsql: Allow UNIQUE indexes on partitioned tables
Date
Msg-id CAKFQuwZ1hjrNt6AKT88xcObzoZN6gasE4gmXOtduQAwN-HY-HA@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: pgsql: Allow UNIQUE indexes on partitioned tables  (Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>)
Responses Re: pgsql: Allow UNIQUE indexes on partitioned tables  (Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>)
List pgsql-hackers
On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 8:36 AM, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org> wrote:
Many thanks for reading through it!

David G. Johnston wrote:
> I found the following change to be confusing.
 [...]
> I was expecting the doc for ADD CONSTRAINT USING INDEX to note the
> limitation explicitly - in lieu of the above paragraph.

Agreed.  I moved the note to ADD CONSTRAINT and added a different on to
ADD CONSTRAINT USING INDEX.

> Also, I cannot reason out what the following limitation means:
>
> /doc/src/sgml/ref/create_table.sgml
> +      If any partitions are in turn partitioned, all columns of each
> partition
> +      key are considered at each level below the <literal>UNIQUE</literal>
> +      constraint.

I can see that being unclear.  I tried to be very concise, to avoid
spending too many words on what is mostly a fringe feature; but that
probably didn't work very well.  Wording suggestions welcome.
​[...]​
 
then you may create a unique or PK constraint on t only if you include
both columns (a,b).  You may not create a PK on t (a), which is a bit
surprising since (b) is not part of the partition key of t directly,
only of t_1.

Of course, if you create a unique constraint on t_1 (i.e. it doesn't
cover all of t) then you may use (b) alone -- that's what "each level
below the UNIQUE constraint" supposed to convey.

Something like:

When establishing a unique constraint for a multi-level partition hierarchy all the "partition by" columns of the target partitioned table, as well as those of all its descendant partitioned tables, must be included in the constraint definition.

If I understand the above then the following failing test would be a worthy addition to memorialize the behavior of ALTER TABLE ATTACH under this constraint.

create table idxpart (a int primary key, b int) partition by range (a);
create table idxpart1 (a int not null, b int, primary key (a, b)) partition by range (a, b);
alter table idxpart attach partition idxpart1 for values from (1) to (1000);


I have trouble coming up with a real-world example where you would run
into this limitation in practice.

​Indeed
David J.

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