Good news!

    FYI,  with  contributions  from Stephan Szabo and Don Baccus,
    the FOREIGN KEY project made impressive progress  during  the
    last days.

    pg_dump is now able to dump FK constraints.

    pg_dump arranges to disable/reenable all triggers during data
    only reload.

    ALTER TABLE ... ADD  CONSTRAINT  ...  FOREIGN  KEY  is  fully
    implemented,  and  all  existing data in the altered table is
    verified to satisfy the new constraint.

    The table actually created can  be  self  referenced  in  the
    constraints.

    In   contrast   to   my   proposal,   MATCH  FULL  and  MATCH
    <unspecified> will both be fully supported in 7.0 already. So
    only MATCH PARTIAL will be left for 7.1.

    The  open  items  left for 7.0 are now the file buffering for
    the trigger queue, the parser  problem  with  NOT  DEFERRABLE
    (where Thomas actually jumps in), building a regression suite
    and documentation.

    Many thanks to the two guys above. Without them, FOREIGN  KEY
    would  not  only  have  failed  to be finished in time. There
    would have been a big mistake maken for  NO  ACTION  at  all,
    leaving   a   huge  hole  for  possible  violations  and  not
    conforming to the standard.

    There is more to do after 7.0 is out, like  ensuring  that  a
    unique  constraint  is  defined  on  referenced  PK  columns,
    changing RESTRICT actions to fire as  soon  as  possible  and
    ensuring  uniqueness  of  constraint names. But what has been
    done so far is IMHO really a major leap forward.

    7.0 will have better FOREIGN KEY support than I expected.


Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#========================================= wieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #



Mon, 7 Feb 2000 19:35:54 +0100 (CET)
wieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck)
RI project status