Re: Disable and enable of table and column constraints

On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 16:07 -0400, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > Michael Gould <mgould@intermodalsoftwaresolutions.net> writes:
> > > It would be nice if we could enable and disable column and table
> > > constraints.  I believe that you can do this in Oracle but this is very
> > > handy for testing stored procedures and other external processes.
> > 
> > Drop the constraint and re-add it later...
> 
> That's not very useful when adding it later means grabbing an exclusive
> lock on the table for the whole duration of the full table scan required
> to check the table.

It's also useful to define foreign keys for documentation purposes but
not enforce them for some reason.