Thread

Re: Check constraints on partition parents only?

Nikhil Sontakke <nikhil.sontakke@enterprisedb.com> — 2011-07-27T10:39:59Z

Hi,


>  Yeah, but I think we need to take that chance.  At the very least, we
>> need to support the equivalent of a non-inherited CHECK (false) on
>> parent tables.
>>
>
> Indeed. I usually enforce that with a trigger that raises an exception, but
> of course that doesn't help at all with constraint exclusion, and I saw a
> result just a few weeks ago (I forget the exact details) where it appeared
> that the plan chosen was significantly worse because the parent table wasn't
> excluded, so there's a  non-trivial downside from having this restriction.
>
>
The downside appears to be non-trivial indeed! I cooked up the attached
patch to try to allow ALTER...ONLY...CHECK(false) on parent tables.

If this approach looks acceptable, I can provide a complete patch later with
some documentation changes (I think we ought to tell about this special case
in the documentation) and a minor test case along with it (if the need be
felt for the test case).

Although partitioning ought to be looked at from a different angle
completely, maybe this small patch can help out a bit in the current scheme
of things, although this is indeed a unusual special casing... Thoughts?

Regards,
Nikhils