Re: Most system catalog columns should be NOT NULL

Tom Lane wrote:
> A conversation in pgsql-interfaces reminded me that it would be a good
> idea for initdb to try to set attnotnull correctly for columns of the
> system catalogs.  Although we generally don't recommend that people
> update catalogs directly, it's sometimes done anyway; having NOT NULL
> constraints set on the columns that mustn't be null would help make
> the system more robust.
> 
> It would be fairly easy to make bootstrap.c set attnotnull to true
> for any column that's of a fixed-width datatype.  That appears to
> solve 99% of the problem with an appropriate amount of effort.
> We could imagine inventing some BKI macro to explicitly label nullable
> or not-nullable columns in the include/catalog headers, but I don't
> think it's worth that much trouble.
> 
> Comments?

Yep, should be done.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
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