Re: Reject ADD CONSTRAINT NOT NULL if name mismatches existing domain not-null constraint

From: Álvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)kurilemu(dot)de>
To: Chao Li <li(dot)evan(dot)chao(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: jian he <jian(dot)universality(at)gmail(dot)com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Reject ADD CONSTRAINT NOT NULL if name mismatches existing domain not-null constraint
Date: 2026-03-02 10:34:11
Message-ID: 202603021031.zk4whpelpxec@alvherre.pgsql
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On 2026-Mar-02, Chao Li wrote:

> But when I played with the patch, I saw a problem. In the test script, we can see:
> ```
> alter domain connotnull add constraint constr1 not null;
> alter domain connotnull add constraint constr1 not null; — redundant
> ```
>
> If we first create a named constraint “constr1” then create an unnamed one, that’s fine, the unnamed is considered as redundant. However, if I do the reverse order, add a unnamed first, then “constr1”, it failed:
> ```
> evantest=# create domain connotnull integer;
> CREATE DOMAIN
> evantest=# alter domain connotnull add not null;
> ALTER DOMAIN
> evantest=# alter domain connotnull add constraint constr1 not null;
> ERROR: cannot create not-null constraint "constr1" for domain "connotnull"
> DETAIL: A not-null constraint named "connotnull_not_null" already exists for domain "connotnull".
> ```
>
> Is that an expected behavior?

Yes. A column or domain can only have one not-null constraint, and the
default name is not going to match "constr1", so if you request constr1
first, then that's okay because the second unnamed one matches the
constraint; but if you request the unnamed first it'll get the default
name and when you next request "constr1", that won't match the name that
was defaulted.

--
Álvaro Herrera PostgreSQL Developer — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"La espina, desde que nace, ya pincha" (Proverbio africano)

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