Re: [HACKERS] Inherited constraints and search paths (was Re:

Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> Doing anything to restrict dropping of inherited constraints seems like
> wasted effort and potentially annoying anyhow.

Uh, why? Arguably the constraints are as much part of the parent table
definition as the columns themselves. If you had "check (f1 > 0)" in
the definition of a table, wouldn't you be pretty surprised to select
from it and find rows with f1 < 0?

regression=# create table parent(f1 int check (f1 > 0));
CREATE TABLE
regression=# create table child() inherits(parent);
CREATE TABLE
regression=# alter table child drop constraint parent_f1_check;
ALTER TABLE
regression=# insert into child values(-1);
INSERT 0 1
regression=# select * from parent;
f1
----
-1
(1 row)

I think a good argument can be made that the above behavior is a bug,
and that the ALTER command should have been rejected. We've gone to
great lengths to make sure you can't ALTER a child table to make it
incompatible with the parent in terms of the column names and types;
shouldn't this be true of check constraints as well?

regards, tom lane