Re: cataloguing NOT NULL constraints

Excerpts from Dean Rasheed's message of sáb jul 23 04:37:06 -0400 2011:
> On 22 July 2011 22:28, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

> >> mine was that we need a command such as
> >>
> >> ALTER TABLE foo ALTER COLUMN bar SET NOT NULL name_of_notnull_constr
> >>
> >> where the last bit is what's new.
> >
> > Well, if you don't have that, I don't see how you have any chance of
> > pg_dump working correctly.
> 
> Ah yes, pg_dump's dumpConstraint() needs a clause to alter a table
> adding a named NOT NULL constraint (and the DOMAIN case should be
> preserving the constraint's name too). So it looks like some new
> syntax for ALTER TABLE to add named NOT NULL constraints is probably
> needed before this can be committed.

So after writing the code to handle named NOT NULL constraints for
tables, I'm thinking that dumpConstraints needs to be fixed thusly:

@@ -12888,6 +12968,27 @@ dumpConstraint(Archive *fout, ConstraintInfo *coninfo)                        NULL, NULL);
 }   }
 
+   else if (coninfo->contype == 'n' && tbinfo)
+   {
+       /* NOT NULL constraint on a table */
+       if (coninfo->separate)
+       {
+           write_msg(NULL, "NOT NULL constraints cannot be dumped separately from their owning table\n");
+           exit_nicely();
+       }
+   }
+   else if (coninfo->contype == 'n' && tbinfo == NULL)
+   {
+       /* NOT NULL constraint on a domain */
+       TypeInfo   *tyinfo = coninfo->condomain;
+
+       /* Ignore if not to be dumped separately */
+       if (coninfo->separate)
+       {
+           write_msg(NULL, "NOT NULL constraints cannot be dumped separately from their owning domain\n");
+           exit_nicely();
+       }
+   }   else   {       write_msg(NULL, "unrecognized constraint type: %c\n", coninfo->contype);


There doesn't seem to be any point in giving pg_dump the ability to dump
such constraints separately; I don't think there's any situation in
which dependencies between the table/domain and NOT NULL constraints
would get circular (which is what causes them to acquire the "separate"
flag).  I don't want to write code that is going to be always
unused, particularly not in a beast as hairy such as pg_dump.

Note that the code dumps not null constraints along with the table
definition, which includes the constraint name, so it works perfectly
fine already.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.
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