Horton

Re: SQL:2011 application time

Paul A Jungwirth <pj@illuminatedcomputing.com>

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From: Paul A Jungwirth <pj@illuminatedcomputing.com>
To: Vik Fearing <vik@postgresfriends.org>
Cc: Corey Huinker <corey.huinker@gmail.com>, Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>, Jaime Casanova <jcasanov@systemguards.com.ec>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2022-01-06T18:08:54Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Rename gist stratnum support function

  2. Remove support for temporal RESTRICT foreign keys

  3. Cache NO ACTION foreign keys separately from RESTRICT foreign keys

  4. Fix NO ACTION temporal foreign keys when the referenced endpoints change

  5. Improve whitespace in without_overlaps test

  6. Tests for logical replication with temporal keys

  7. Support for GiST in get_equal_strategy_number()

  8. Make the conditions in IsIndexUsableForReplicaIdentityFull() more explicit

  9. Replace get_equal_strategy_number_for_am() by get_equal_strategy_number()

  10. Improve internal logical replication error for missing equality strategy

  11. Simplify IsIndexUsableForReplicaIdentityFull()

  12. Fix ALTER TABLE / REPLICA IDENTITY for temporal tables

  13. doc: Update pg_constraint.conexclop docs for WITHOUT OVERLAPS

  14. doc: Add PERIOD to ALTER TABLE reference docs

  15. doc: Add WITHOUT OVERLAPS to ALTER TABLE reference docs

  16. Add temporal FOREIGN KEY contraints

  17. Add temporal PRIMARY KEY and UNIQUE constraints

  18. Add stratnum GiST support function

  19. Avoid crashing when a JIT-inlined backend function throws an error.

  20. Revert temporal primary keys and foreign keys

  21. Fix ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING/UPDATE for temporal indexes

  22. Add test for REPLICA IDENTITY with a temporal key

  23. Use half-open interval notation in without_overlaps tests

  24. Use daterange and YMD in without_overlaps tests instead of tsrange.

  25. Rename pg_constraint.conwithoutoverlaps to conperiod

  26. Fix comment on gist_stratnum_btree

  27. Add missing TAP test name

  28. Improve error handling of HMAC computations

  29. Rename functions to avoid future conflicts

On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 6:45 AM Vik Fearing <vik@postgresfriends.org> wrote:
>
> On 1/5/22 11:03 PM, Corey Huinker wrote:
> >
> > There was similar work being done for system periods, which are a bit
> > simpler but require a side (history) table to be created.
>
> This is false.  SYSTEM_TIME periods do not need any kind of history.
> This was one of the problems I had with Surafel's attempt because it was
> confusing the period with SYSTEM VERSIONING.  Versioning needs the
> period but the inverse is not true.

This is an interesting point. Syntactically, there are three different
things: the generated started/end columns, the period declaration, and
the WITH SYSTEM VERSIONING modifier to the table. You could declare a
system period without making the table versioned. Practically speaking
I don't know why you'd ever create a system period without a versioned
table (do you know of any uses Vik?), but perhaps we can exploit the
separation to add system periods in the same patch that adds
application periods.

The first two bits of syntax *are* tied together: you need columns
with GENERATED ALWAYS AS ROW START/END to declare the system period,
and less intuitively the standard says you can't use AS ROW START/END
unless those columns appear in a system period (2.e.v.2 under Part 2:
Foundation, 11.3 <table definition>). Personally I'd be willing to
ignore that latter requirement. For one thing, what does Postgres do
with the columns if you drop the period? Dropping the columns
altogether seems very harsh, so I guess you'd just remove the
GENERATED clause.

Another weird thing is that you don't (can't) say STORED for those
columns. But they are certainly stored somewhere. I would store the
values just like any other column (even if non-current rows get moved
to a separate table). Also then you don't have to do anything extra
when the GENERATED clause is dropped.

If we wanted to support system-time periods without building all of
system versioning, what would that look like? At first I thought it
would be a trivial addition to part-1 of the patch here, but the more
I think about it the more it seems to deserve its own patch.

One rule I think we should follow is that using a non-system-versioned
table (with a system period) should get you to the same place as using
a system-versioned table and then removing the system versioning. But
the standard says that dropping system versioning should automatically
drop all historical records (2 under Part 2: Foundation, 11.30 <drop
system versioning clause>). That actually makes sense though: when you
do DML we automatically update the start/end columns, but we don't
save copies of the previous data (and incidentally the end column will
always be the max value.) So there is a use case, albeit a thin one:
you get a Rails-like updated_at column that is maintained
automatically by your RDBMS. That is pretty easy, but I think I'd
still break it out into a separate patch. I'm happy to work on that as
something that builds on top of my part-1 patch here.

Yours,
Paul