foreign key data type dereferencing

From: Murat Tasan <murat(dot)tasan(at)cwru(dot)edu>
To: pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: foreign key data type dereferencing
Date: 2006-03-23 20:51:17
Message-ID: 788CEACA-1046-4682-9464-08C86E888A42@cwru.edu
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Hi all, I have a quick question...

In function definitions one can dereference the type of some
relation's column using the %TYPE syntax. This is a very useful
feature that helps prevent type mismatch problems in databases that
are frequently changing (for example in a scientific environment
where tables are being added often, and the re-use of an already
defined function is then simple).

It would also be useful to have the same functionality in the CREATE
TABLE statement, in particular when defining a FOREIGN KEY
constraint. For example, something along these lines:

CREATE TABLE foo (attribute_1 other_table.attribute_pk%TYPE
REFERENCES other_table.attribute_pk);

or the even simpler:

CREATE TABLE foo (attribute_1 REFERENCES other_table.attribute_pk);

However, this doesn't seem possible. Now, under the assumption that
many people have encountered this in the past, I'm curious about the
different solutions/workarounds most have employed successfully.

Thanks for any insight on this,

Murat

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