Clarify restriction on partitioned tables primary key / unique indexes

From: David Rowley <dgrowleyml(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: PostgreSQL Developers <pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Clarify restriction on partitioned tables primary key / unique indexes
Date: 2022-09-02 09:44:08
Message-ID: CAApHDvoU-u9iTqKjteYRFfi+UNEk7dbSAcyxEQD==vZt9B1KnA@mail.gmail.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Over on [1], there was a question about why it wasn't possible to
create the following table:

CREATE TABLE foobar(
id BIGINT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
baz VARCHAR NULL DEFAULT NULL
) PARTITION BY HASH(my_func(id));

The above is disallowed by 2 checks in DefineIndex().

1. If the partitioned key contains an expression we disallow the
addition of the constraint, per:

/*
* It may be possible to support UNIQUE constraints when partition
* keys are expressions, but is it worth it? Give up for now.
*/
if (key->partattrs[i] == 0)
ereport(ERROR,

2. We insist that the primary key / unique constraint contain all of
the columns that the partitioned key does.

We only mention #2 in the docs [2], but we don't mention anything
about if the columns can be part of a function call or expression or
not, per:

"Unique constraints (and hence primary keys) on partitioned tables
must include all the partition key columns. This limitation exists
because the individual indexes making up the constraint can only
directly enforce uniqueness within their own partitions; therefore,
the partition structure itself must guarantee that there are not
duplicates in different partitions."

The attached attempts to clarify these restrictions more accurately
based on the current code's restrictions.

If there's no objections or suggestions for better wording, I'd like
to commit the attached.

David

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAH7vdhNF0EdYZz3GLpgE3RSJLwWLhEk7A_fiKS9dPBT3Dz_3eA@mail.gmail.com
[2] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/ddl-partitioning.html

Attachment Content-Type Size
clarify_partitioned_table_restriction.patch text/plain 1.2 KB

Responses

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Daniel Gustafsson 2022-09-02 09:56:31 Remove dead code from sepgsql
Previous Message Wolfgang Walther 2022-09-02 09:42:25 Re: Allow foreign keys to reference a superset of unique columns