Re: (9.1) btree_gist support for searching on "not equals"

Marko Tiikkaja <marko(dot)tiikkaja(at)cs(dot)helsinki(dot)fi> wrote:

> On 5/21/10 11:47 PM +0300, Jeff Davis wrote:
> > It also allows you to enforce the constraint that only one tuple exists
> > in a table by doing something like:
> >
> > create table a
> > (
> > i int,
> > exclude using gist (i with<>),
> > unique (i)
> > );

+1. I've not read the code, but it might be considerable that we can
abort index scans if we find a first index entry for "i". While we must
scan all candidates for "WHERE i <> ?", but we can abort for the constraint
case because we know existing values are all the same.

> FWIW, this is achievable a lot more easily:
> CREATE UNIQUE INDEX "a_single_row" ON a ((1));

The former exclusion constraint means "one same value for all rows",
but your alternative means "a_single_row", right?

Regards,
---
Takahiro Itagaki
NTT Open Source Software Center