Good news!
FYI, with contributions from Stephan Szabo and Don Baccus, the FOREIGN KEY project made impressive progress
during the last days.
pg_dump is now able to dump FK constraints.
pg_dump arranges to disable/reenable all triggers during data only reload.
ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT ... FOREIGN KEY is fully implemented, and all existing data in the altered
tableis verified to satisfy the new constraint.
The table actually created can be self referenced in the constraints.
In contrast to my proposal, MATCH FULL and MATCH <unspecified> will both be fully supported in 7.0
already.So only MATCH PARTIAL will be left for 7.1.
The open items left for 7.0 are now the file buffering for the trigger queue, the parser problem with NOT
DEFERRABLE (where Thomas actually jumps in), building a regression suite and documentation.
Many thanks to the two guys above. Without them, FOREIGN KEY would not only have failed to be finished in
time.There would have been a big mistake maken for NO ACTION at all, leaving a huge hole for possible
violations and not conforming to the standard.
There is more to do after 7.0 is out, like ensuring that a unique constraint is defined on referenced PK
columns, changing RESTRICT actions to fire as soon as possible and ensuring uniqueness of constraint names.
Butwhat has been done so far is IMHO really a major leap forward.
7.0 will have better FOREIGN KEY support than I expected.
Jan
--
#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
#========================================= wieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #