Re: Constraint stuff

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> Stephan Szabo <sszabo(at)megazone23(dot)bigpanda(dot)com> writes:
> > Tom had suggested storing a more
> > understandable form of the foreign key constraint
> > to make dumping more reasonable in its own table.
> > I'd guess like the src stored for check constraints.

...

> I don't think we should worry about that. What's actually needed IMHO
> is an "ALTER FUNCTION" command that allows you to replace the body of
> an existing function, and perhaps change its name, but NOT its type
> signature (result type and number/types of arguments).

IIRC Oracle allows the syntax CREATE OR REPLACE in many places, for
example for changing VIEWS and PROCEDURES without affecting the things
dependent on them.

CREATE OR REPLACE works also for not-yet-existing function which ALTER
probably would not.

> Changing the
> signature is inherently not a transparent operation because it'd
> invalidate stored expressions that use the function. ALTER would let
> you make safe changes to a function without changing its OID and thus
> without invalidating references-by-OID.
>

----------
Hannu