Waiting for 9.2 – NOT VALID CHECKS

On 30th of June, Alvaro Herrera committed patch:

Enable CHECK constraints to be declared NOT VALID
 
This means that they can initially be added to a large existing table
without checking its initial contents, but new tuples must comply to
them; a separate pass invoked by ALTER TABLE / VALIDATE can verify
existing data and ensure it complies with the constraint, at which point
it is marked validated and becomes a normal part of the table ecosystem.
 
An non-validated CHECK constraint is ignored in the planner for
constraint_exclusion purposes; when validated, cached plans are
recomputed so that partitioning starts working right away.
 
This patch also enables domains to have unvalidated CHECK constraints
attached to them as well by way of ALTER DOMAIN / ADD CONSTRAINT / NOT
VALID, which can later be validated with ALTER DOMAIN / VALIDATE
CONSTRAINT.
 
Thanks to Thom Brown, Dean Rasheed and Jaime Casanova for the various
reviews, and Robert Hass for documentation wording improvement
suggestions.
 
This patch was sponsored by Enova Financial.

Continue reading Waiting for 9.2 – NOT VALID CHECKS

Waiting for 9.1 – INVALID FOREIGN KEYS

On 8th of February, Simon Riggs committed patch:

Extend ALTER TABLE TO allow FOREIGN KEYS TO be added WITHOUT initial validation.
FK constraints that are marked NOT VALID may later be VALIDATED, which uses an
ShareUpdateExclusiveLock ON CONSTRAINT TABLE AND RowShareLock ON referenced
TABLE. Significantly reduces LOCK strength AND duration WHEN adding FKs.
NEW state visible FROM psql.
 
Simon Riggs, WITH reviews FROM Marko Tiikkaja AND Robert Haas

Continue reading Waiting for 9.1 – INVALID FOREIGN KEYS