Re: cataloguing NOT NULL constraints

On Tue, Jul 25, 2023 at 8:36 AM Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org> wrote:
> Okay then, I've made these show up in the footer of \d+.  This is in
> patch 0003 here.  Please let me know what do you think of the regression
> changes.

Seems OK.

I'm not really thrilled with the idea of every not-null constraint
having a name, to be honest. Of all the kinds of constraints that we
have in the system, NOT NULL constraints are probably the ones where
naming them is least likely to be interesting, because they don't
really have any interesting properties. A CHECK constraint has an
expression; a foreign key constraint has columns that it applies to on
each side plus the identity of the table and opclass information, but
a NOT NULL constraint seems like it can never have any property other
than which column. So it sort of seems like a waste to name it. But if
we want it catalogued then we don't really have an option, so I
suppose we just have to accept a bit of clutter as the price of doing
business.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com