Re: Constraint documentation

On 2018-Aug-07, Lætitia Avrot wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> I understand what you're pointing at and I agree that it could be a good
> thing to be able to dump/restore a table without problem.
>
> My point was that check constraints weren't supposed to be used that way
> theorically (or maybe i'm mistaken ?) so I thought maybe we should just
> inform the user that this kind of use of a check constraint is a misuse of
> that feature.

Tom Lane pointed out in another thread that the SQL standard lists
feature F673 "Reads SQL-data routine invocations in CHECK constraints"
which permits CHECK constraints to examine tables, so saying "you're not
supposed to do this", while correct from a Postgres perspective, would
be short-sighted ISTM, because we will make ourselves liars as soon as
we implement the feature.

I agree that we should point this out in *some* way, just not sure how.
Maybe something like "Postgres does not currently support CHECK
constraints containing queries, therefore we recommend to avoid them."
I would not mention pg_dump by name, just say dumps may not restore
depending on phase of moon.

(BTW I'm not sure of the term "other tables".  You could have a query
that references the same table ...)

--
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/

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