Waiting for PostgreSQL 18 – Allow NOT NULL constraints to be added as NOT VALID

On 7th of April 2025, Álvaro Herrera committed patch:

Allow NOT NULL constraints to be added as NOT VALID
 
This allows them to be added without scanning the table, and validating
them afterwards without holding access exclusive lock on the table after
any violating rows have been deleted or fixed.
 
Doing ALTER TABLE ... SET NOT NULL for a column that has an invalid
not-null constraint validates that constraint.  ALTER TABLE .. VALIDATE
CONSTRAINT is also supported.  There are various checks on whether an
invalid constraint is allowed in a child table when the parent table has
a valid constraint; this should match what we do for enforced/not
enforced constraints.
 
pg_attribute.attnotnull is now only an indicator for whether a not-null
constraint exists for the column; whether it's valid or invalid must be
queried in pg_constraint.  Applications can continue to query
pg_attribute.attnotnull as before, but now it's possible that NULL rows
are present in the column even when that's set to true.
 
For backend internal purposes, we cache the nullability status in
CompactAttribute->attnullability that each tuple descriptor carries
(replacing CompactAttribute.attnotnull, which was a mirror of
Form_pg_attribute.attnotnull).  During the initial tuple descriptor
creation, based on the pg_attribute scan, we set this to UNRESTRICTED if
pg_attribute.attnotnull is false, or to UNKNOWN if it's true; then we
update the latter to VALID or INVALID depending on the pg_constraint
scan.  This flag is also copied when tupledescs are copied.
 
Comparing tuple descs for equality must also compare the
CompactAttribute.attnullability flag and return false in case of a
mismatch.
 
pg_dump deals with these constraints by storing the OIDs of invalid
not-null constraints in a separate array, and running a query to obtain
their properties.  The regular table creation SQL omits them entirely.
They are then dealt with in the same way as "separate" CHECK
constraints, and dumped after the data has been loaded.  Because no
additional pg_dump infrastructure was required, we don't bump its
version number.
 
I decided not to bump catversion either, because the old catalog state
works perfectly in the new world.  (Trying to run with new catalog state
and the old server version would likely run into issues, however.)
 
System catalogs do not support invalid not-null constraints (because
commit 14e87ffa5c54 didn't allow them to have pg_constraint rows
anyway.)
 
Author: Rushabh Lathia <rushabh.lathia@gmail.com>
Author: Jian He <jian.universality@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
Tested-by: Ashutosh Bapat <ashutosh.bapat.oss@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAGPqQf0KitkNack4F5CFkFi-9Dqvp29Ro=EpcWt=4_hs-Rt+bQ@mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 18 – Allow NOT NULL constraints to be added as NOT VALID

Waiting for PostgreSQL 18 – Allow json{b}_strip_nulls to remove null array elements

On 5th of March 2025, Andrew Dunstan committed patch:

Allow json{b}_strip_nulls to remove null array elements
 
An additional paramater ("strip_in_arrays") is added to these functions.
It defaults to false. If true, then null array elements are removed as
well as null valued object fields. JSON that just consists of a single
null is not affected.
 
Author: Florents Tselai <florents.tselai@gmail.com>
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/4BCECCD5-4F40-4313-9E98-9E16BEB0B01D@gmail.com

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Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – Add UNIQUE null treatment option

On 3rd of February 2022, Peter Eisentraut committed patch:

Add UNIQUE null treatment option 
 
The SQL standard has been ambiguous about whether null values in
unique constraints should be considered equal or not.  Different
implementations have different behaviors.  In the SQL:202x draft, this
has been formalized by making this implementation-defined and adding
an option on unique constraint definitions UNIQUE [ NULLS [NOT]
DISTINCT ] to choose a behavior explicitly.
 
This patch adds this option to PostgreSQL.  The default behavior
remains UNIQUE NULLS DISTINCT.  Making this happen in the btree code
is pretty easy; most of the patch is just to carry the flag around to
all the places that need it.
 
The CREATE UNIQUE INDEX syntax extension is not from the standard,
it's my own invention.
 
I named all the internal flags, catalog columns, etc. in the negative
("nulls not distinct") so that the default PostgreSQL behavior is the
default if the flag is false.
 
Reviewed-by: Maxim Orlov <orlovmg@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Pavel Borisov <pashkin.elfe@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/84e5ee1b-387e-9a54-c326-9082674bde78@enterprisedb.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – Add UNIQUE null treatment option