Re: Inheritance in Postgresql ?

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:36 PM, ABBAS SHAKEEL
<shakeel(dot)abbas(dot)qau(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello
> I am not an expert for database but rarely design database for Web and IVR
> applications.
> Today I wonder if there is any practical advantage of inheritance of Tables.
> Lets take the same example that is commonly referred.
>
> CREATE TABLE cities (
> name text,
> population float,
> altitude int -- in feet
> );
>
> CREATE TABLE capitals (
> state char(2)
> ) INHERITS (cities);
>
> Capital table inherit attributes from Cities but no data. I am confused with
> concept of inheritance in postgres.
>
> In These tables what i was supposing is inheritence as that in JAVA. but its
> seems to be  a different scene.

The child table inherits structure from the parent, the parent then
allows you to retrieve data from it and the children together.