Suppose I have two tables:
TABLE_1
ID AGE_T1 NAME
1 5 A
2 23 B
3 5 C
4 9 D
TABLE_2
AGE_T2 FREQUENCY
5 2
9 1
23 1
How can I ensure that a AGE_T2 value must be one of the values of AGE_T1 (non-unique column of TABLE_1)? Need to mention that both TABLE_1 and TABLE_2 are physical tables (not any logical structure as VIEW).
Note: If AGE_T1 were a primary key then a foreign key constraint would be enough for AGE_T2. I also have a plan to use INSERT TRIGGER if there is no better solution.
Create a materialized view to contain only the distinct ages in TABLE_1:
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW LOG ON TABLE_1
WITH SEQUENCE, ROWID(AGE_T1)
INCLUDING NEW VALUES;
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW TABLE_1_MV
BUILD IMMEDIATE
REFRESH FAST ON COMMIT
AS SELECT DISTINCT AGE_T1
FROM TABLE_1;
ALTER TABLE TABLE_1_MV ADD CONSTRAINT t1_mv__age_t1__pk PRIMARY KEY ( AGE_T1 );
Then you can add a FOREIGN KEY on TABLE_2 referencing this as the primary key:
ALTER TABLE TABLE_2 ADD CONSTRAINT t2__age__fk FOREIGN KEY ( AGE_T2 )
REFERENCES TABLE_1_MV ( AGE_T1 );
I think this should work. Not tested.
It's also based on a materialized view; the MV must refresh on commit as in MT0's solution. Let the MV select only rows that violate your lookup condition - and let the MV have a check condition that always evaluates to FALSE, so that it will always reject the insert/update/delete if your original lookup condition is violated. You can make the "always false" constraint deferrable if needed.
This way you will only need one MV, and you won't need to maintain anything.
create materialized view TABLE_2_MV
build immediate
refresh fast on commit
as select age_t2
from table_2
where age_t2 not in (select age_t1 from table_1);
alter table TABLE_2_MV add constraint t2_mv_chk (0 != 0);
Good luck!
Related
There are two tables - orders and a list of services. In the first there is a bool field that the order is approved, if it is true then you can’t insert / delete values in the second table. With the UPDATE of the first table and the DELETE of the second, it is clear.
INSERT make as
INSERT INTO b (a_id, b_value)
SELECT *
FROM (VALUES (1, 'AA1-BB1'),(1, 'AA1-BB2'),(1, 'AA1-BB3')) va
WHERE (SELECT NOT confirm FROM a WHERE a_id = 2);
https://dbfiddle.uk/?rdbms=postgres_12&fiddle=7b0086967c1c38b0c80ca5624ebe92e9
How to forbid to insert without triggers and stored procedures? Is it possible to compose somehow complex constraint or a foreign key for checking conditions at the DBMS level?
The most recent version of Postgres supports generated columns. So, you can do:
alter table b add confirm boolean generated always as (false) stored;
Then create a unique key in a:
alter table a add constraint unq_a_confirm_id unique (confirm, id);
And finally the foreign key relationship:
alter table b add constraint fk_b_a_id_confirm
foreign key (confirm, a_id) references a(confirm, id);
Now, only confirmed = false ids can be used. Note that this will prevent updates to a that would invalidate the foreign key constraint.
I'm having problems with creating a oracle sql script. How do I create these two constraints?
If VID is null then FID has to be null as well (VID = null -> FID = null)
There has to be exactly one row where VID is null which also means that FID has to be null because of 1.
Here is what I have so far:
create table Employee(
Id int primary key,
Name varchar(15) not null,
VID int,
FID int
);
Employee
You can come very close to what you want without a trigger.
You can use a check constraint for the first:
alter table Employee add constraint chk_vid_fid
check (vid is not null or fid is null);
You can do the second using a unique constraint:
create unique index unq_Employee_vid on
Employee(case when vid is null then -1 else id end);
This formulation assumes that id is non-negative, as most ids usually are. If you do use the full range of integer values, then I would be explicit with a string:
create unique index unq_Employee_vid on
Employee(case when vid is null then 'null vid' else cast(id as varchar2(255)) end);
This guarantees at most one row where vid is null, rather than exactly one row. You cannot easily have a constraint that guarantees that exactly one row has a value, because empty tables do not match the condition -- and tables are empty when they are created.
Here is how you can enforce your requirement - to have exactly one row with VID is NULL. As I said in my Comment under your original question (and Gordon said as well in his accepted Answer), you cannot do this just with constraints. However, you can do it with a materialized view. Note that you must create the MV with refresh fast on commit, and that requires certain things for the materialized view log on the base table.
Also: If you try everything exactly as written, the constraint on the MV will fail (of course, because the base table will be empty, so there will be no row where VID is NULL). Add rows to the base table, of which exactly one has NULL for VID, then commit the transaction, and then execute the alter table command to add the constraint to the MV. From that point on, a transaction on the base table (consisting of one or more insert, delete, update or merge statements, followed by one commit) will go through if and only if it leaves exactly one row with NULL in the VID column.
One oddity to keep in mind: even though there is an ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW statement in Oracle SQL, to add a constraint on a MV we must use the ALTER TABLE statement (with the MV's name), not ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW.
Note that I used the name t_Employee for the base table, as I already had a table EMPLOYEE and I don't want to mess with my existing objects.
create table t_Employee(
Id int primary key,
Name varchar(15) not null,
VID int,
FID int
);
alter table t_Employee add constraint chk_vid_fid
check (vid is not null or fid is null)
;
create materialized view log on t_Employee
with rowid
(VID)
including new values
;
create materialized view mv_Employee
refresh fast on commit
as select count(*) ct
from t_Employee
where VID is null
;
alter table mv_Employee add constraint chk_vid_ct
check (ct = 1)
;
As I can understand documentation the following definitions are equivalent:
create table foo (
id serial primary key,
code integer,
label text,
constraint foo_uq unique (code, label));
create table foo (
id serial primary key,
code integer,
label text);
create unique index foo_idx on foo using btree (code, label);
However, a note in the manual for Postgres 9.4 says:
The preferred way to add a unique constraint to a table is ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT. The use of indexes to enforce unique constraints
could be considered an implementation detail that should not be
accessed directly.
(Edit: this note was removed from the manual with Postgres 9.5.)
Is it only a matter of good style? What are practical consequences of choice one of these variants (e.g. in performance)?
I had some doubts about this basic but important issue, so I decided to learn by example.
Let's create test table master with two columns, con_id with unique constraint and ind_id indexed by unique index.
create table master (
con_id integer unique,
ind_id integer
);
create unique index master_unique_idx on master (ind_id);
Table "public.master"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+---------+-----------
con_id | integer |
ind_id | integer |
Indexes:
"master_con_id_key" UNIQUE CONSTRAINT, btree (con_id)
"master_unique_idx" UNIQUE, btree (ind_id)
In table description (\d in psql) you can tell unique constraint from unique index.
Uniqueness
Let's check uniqueness, just in case.
test=# insert into master values (0, 0);
INSERT 0 1
test=# insert into master values (0, 1);
ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "master_con_id_key"
DETAIL: Key (con_id)=(0) already exists.
test=# insert into master values (1, 0);
ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "master_unique_idx"
DETAIL: Key (ind_id)=(0) already exists.
test=#
It works as expected!
Foreign keys
Now we'll define detail table with two foreign keys referencing to our two columns in master.
create table detail (
con_id integer,
ind_id integer,
constraint detail_fk1 foreign key (con_id) references master(con_id),
constraint detail_fk2 foreign key (ind_id) references master(ind_id)
);
Table "public.detail"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+---------+-----------
con_id | integer |
ind_id | integer |
Foreign-key constraints:
"detail_fk1" FOREIGN KEY (con_id) REFERENCES master(con_id)
"detail_fk2" FOREIGN KEY (ind_id) REFERENCES master(ind_id)
Well, no errors. Let's make sure it works.
test=# insert into detail values (0, 0);
INSERT 0 1
test=# insert into detail values (1, 0);
ERROR: insert or update on table "detail" violates foreign key constraint "detail_fk1"
DETAIL: Key (con_id)=(1) is not present in table "master".
test=# insert into detail values (0, 1);
ERROR: insert or update on table "detail" violates foreign key constraint "detail_fk2"
DETAIL: Key (ind_id)=(1) is not present in table "master".
test=#
Both columns can be referenced in foreign keys.
Constraint using index
You can add table constraint using existing unique index.
alter table master add constraint master_ind_id_key unique using index master_unique_idx;
Table "public.master"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+---------+-----------
con_id | integer |
ind_id | integer |
Indexes:
"master_con_id_key" UNIQUE CONSTRAINT, btree (con_id)
"master_ind_id_key" UNIQUE CONSTRAINT, btree (ind_id)
Referenced by:
TABLE "detail" CONSTRAINT "detail_fk1" FOREIGN KEY (con_id) REFERENCES master(con_id)
TABLE "detail" CONSTRAINT "detail_fk2" FOREIGN KEY (ind_id) REFERENCES master(ind_id)
Now there is no difference between column constraints description.
Partial indexes
In table constraint declaration you cannot create partial indexes.
It comes directly from the definition of create table ....
In unique index declaration you can set WHERE clause to create partial index.
You can also create index on expression (not only on column) and define some other parameters (collation, sort order, NULLs placement).
You cannot add table constraint using partial index.
alter table master add column part_id integer;
create unique index master_partial_idx on master (part_id) where part_id is not null;
alter table master add constraint master_part_id_key unique using index master_partial_idx;
ERROR: "master_partial_idx" is a partial index
LINE 1: alter table master add constraint master_part_id_key unique ...
^
DETAIL: Cannot create a primary key or unique constraint using such an index.
One more advantage of using UNIQUE INDEX vs. UNIQUE CONSTRAINT is that you can easily DROP/CREATE an index CONCURRENTLY, whereas with a constraint you can't.
Uniqueness is a constraint. It happens to be implemented via the creation
of a unique index since an index is quickly able to search all existing
values in order to determine if a given value already exists.
Conceptually the index is an implementation detail and uniqueness should be
associated only with constraints.
The full text
So speed performance should be same
Since various people have provided advantages of unique indexes over unique constraints, here's a drawback: a unique constraint can be deferred (only checked at the end of the transaction), a unique index can not be.
A very minor thing that can be done with constraints only and not with indexes is using the ON CONFLICT ON CONSTRAINT clause (see also this question).
This doesn't work:
CREATE TABLE T (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b INT, c INT);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX u ON t(b);
INSERT INTO T (a, b, c)
VALUES (1, 2, 3)
ON CONFLICT ON CONSTRAINT u
DO UPDATE SET c = 4
RETURNING *;
It produces:
[42704]: ERROR: constraint "u" for table "t" does not exist
Turn the index into a constraint:
DROP INDEX u;
ALTER TABLE t ADD CONSTRAINT u UNIQUE (b);
And the INSERT statement now works.
Another thing I've encountered is that you can use sql expressions in unique indexes but not in constraints.
So, this does not work:
CREATE TABLE users (
name text,
UNIQUE (lower(name))
);
but following works.
CREATE TABLE users (
name text
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX uq_name on users (lower(name));
There is a difference in locking.
Adding an index does not block read access to the table.
Adding a constraint does put a table lock (so all selects are blocked) since it is added via ALTER TABLE.
I read this in the doc:
ADD table_constraint [ NOT VALID ]
This form adds a new constraint to a table using the same syntax as CREATE TABLE, plus the option NOT VALID, which is currently only allowed for foreign key constraints. If the constraint is marked NOT VALID, the potentially-lengthy initial check to verify that all rows in the table satisfy the constraint is skipped. The constraint will still be enforced against subsequent inserts or updates (that is, they'll fail unless there is a matching row in the referenced table). But the database will not assume that the constraint holds for all rows in the table, until it is validated by using the VALIDATE CONSTRAINT option.
So I think it is what you call "partial uniqueness" by adding a constraint.
And, about how to ensure the uniqueness:
Adding a unique constraint will automatically create a unique B-tree index on the column or group of columns listed in the constraint. A uniqueness restriction covering only some rows cannot be written as a unique constraint, but it is possible to enforce such a restriction by creating a unique partial index.
Note: The preferred way to add a unique constraint to a table is ALTER TABLE … ADD CONSTRAINT. The use of indexes to enforce unique constraints could be considered an implementation detail that should not be accessed directly. One should, however, be aware that there’s no need to manually create indexes on unique columns; doing so would just duplicate the automatically-created index.
So we should add constraint, which creates an index, to ensure uniqueness.
How I see this problem?
A "constraint" aims to gramatically ensure that this column should be unique, it establishes a law, a rule; while "index" is semantical, about "how to implement, how to achieve the uniqueness, what does unique means when it comes to implementation". So, the way Postgresql implements it, is very logical: first, you declare that a column should be unique, then, Postgresql adds the implementation of adding an unique index for you.
SELECT a.phone_number,count(*) FROM public.users a
Group BY phone_number Having count(*)>1;
SELECT a.phone_number,count(*) FROM public.retailers a
Group BY phone_number Having count(*)>1;
select a.phone_number from users a inner join users b
on a.id <> b.id and a.phone_number = b.phone_number order by a.id;
select a.phone_number from retailers a inner join retailers b
on a.id <> b.id and a.phone_number = b.phone_number order by a.id
DELETE FROM
users a
USING users b
WHERE
a.id > b.id
AND a.phone_number = b.phone_number;
DELETE FROM
retailers a
USING retailers b
WHERE
a.id > b.id
AND a.phone_number = b.phone_number;
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX CONCURRENTLY users_phone_number
ON users (phone_number);
To Verify:
insert into users(name,phone_number,created_at,updated_at) select name,phone_number,created_at,updated_at from users
I have a table A that references a table B. Table B needs to be populated with updated data from an external source and for efficiency I use TRUNCATE followed by a COPY. This is done even when the application is live.
To further improve efficiency, as suggested in the documentation, I want to drop and then recreate the foreign keys.
However I have some doubts.
If I drop the FKs, COPY and then recreate FKs inside the same transaction, can I be sure that the constraint is preserved even on data inserted in table A during the transaction? I ask this because in theory a transaction is atomic, but in the docs, about the temporary removal of FKs say:
there is a trade-off between data load speed and loss of error checking while the constraint is missing.
If there's a chance that a wrong reference is inserted in the meantime, what happens when you try to recreate the FK constraints?
TRUNCATE is not allowed on any table referenced by a foreign key, unless you use TRUNCATE CASCADE, which will also truncate the referencing tables. The DEFERRABLE status of the constraint does not affect this. I don't think there is any way around this; you will need to drop the constraint.
However, there is no risk of an integrity violation in doing so. ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT locks the table in question (as does TRUNCATE), so your import process is guaranteed to have exclusive access to the table for the duration of its transaction. Any attempts at concurrent inserts will simply hang until the import has committed, and by the time they are allowed to proceeed, the constraint will be back in place.
You can make the foreign key constraint deferrable (initially deferred). That way it will be checked just once at the end of the transaction.
ALTER TABLE
xxx
ADD CONSTRAINT
xxx_yyy_id_fk FOREIGN KEY (yyy_id)
REFERENCES
yyy
DEFERRABLE INITIALLY DEFERRED;
In all the cases, transactions are fully atomic in PostgreSQL (not only in theory), including DDL statements (such as CREATE/DROP constraint), so even if you drop a foreign key, then insert data, then create the foreign key and do everything in one transaction, then you are safe - if the recreation of the foreign key constraint fails, then the inserted data will also be dismissed.
Still, it is better to switch to deferred foreign keys, rather than dropping and then creating them.
Analytic answer: measure the number of new/same/updated/deleted records.
There are four cases:
The key in the B table is not present in the b_import: delete
The key in the b_import is not present on the old B: insert
The key is present in both old B and new B, but the contents are the same: ignore
The keys are the same, but the attribete values differ: Update
-- some test data for `A`, `B` and `B_import`:
CREATE TABLE b
( id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
, payload varchar
);
INSERT INTO b(id,payload) SELECT gs, 'bb_' || gs::varchar
FROM generate_series(1,20) gs;
CREATE TABLE b_import
( id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
, payload varchar
);
INSERT INTO b_import(id,payload) SELECT gs, 'bb_' || gs::varchar
FROM generate_series(10,15) gs;
-- In real life this table will be filled by a `COPY b_import FROM ...`
INSERT INTO b_import(id,payload) SELECT gs, 'b2_' || gs::varchar
FROM generate_series(16,25) gs;
CREATE TABLE a
( id SERIAL NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
, b_id INTEGER references b(id) ON DELETE SET NULL
, aaaaa varchar
);
INSERT INTO a(b_id,aaaaa)
SELECT gs,'aaaaa_' || gs::text FROM generate_series(1,20) gs;
CREATE INDEX ON a(b_id); -- index supporting the FK
-- show it
SELECT a.id, a.aaaaa
,b.id, b.payload AS oldpayload
FROM a
FULL JOIN b ON a.b_id=b.id
ORDER BY a.id;
-- Do the actual I/U/D and report the numbers of affected rows
-- EXPLAIN
WITH ins AS ( -- INSERTS
INSERT INTO b(id, payload)
SELECT b_import.id, b_import.payload
FROM b_import
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT 1 FROM b
WHERE b.id = b_import.id
)
RETURNING b.id
)
, del AS ( -- DELETES
DELETE FROM b
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT 2 FROM b_import
WHERE b_import.id = b.id
)
RETURNING b.id
)
, upd AS ( -- UPDATES
UPDATE b
SET payload=b_import.payload
FROM b_import
WHERE b_import.id = b.id
AND b_import.payload IS DISTINCT FROM b.payload -- exclude idempotent updates
-- AND NOT EXISTS ( -- exclude deleted records
-- SELECT 3 FROM del
-- WHERE del.id = b_import.id
-- )
-- AND NOT EXISTS ( -- avoid touching freshly inserted rows
-- SELECT 4 FROM ins
-- WHERE ins.id = b_import.id
-- )
RETURNING b.id
)
SELECT COUNT(*) AS orgb
, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM b_import) AS newb
, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ins) AS ninserted
, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM del) AS ndeleted
, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM upd) AS nupdated
FROM b
;
Dropping a constraint and rebuilding it after the import is expensive: all the records in both A and B are involved.
temporally ignoring the constraint is dangerous: the new B table could miss some rows that are still referenced by A's FK.
ergo: You could end up with a crippled model, and you'd have to rebuild As references (which is basically impossible, without additional information (which would be redundant, BTW))
This isn't a big deal, but my OCD is acting up with the following problem in the database I'm creating. I'm not used to working with databases, but the data has to be stored somewhere...
Problem
I have two tables A and B.
One of the datafields is common to both tables - segments. There's a finite number of segments, and I want to write queries that connect values from A to B through their segment values, very much asif the following table structure was used:
However, as you can see the table Segments is empty. There's nothing more I want to put into that table, rather than the ID to give other table as foreign keys. I want my tables to be as simple as possible, and therefore adding another one just seems wrong.
Note also that one of these tables (A, say) is actually master, in the sense that you should be able to put any value for segment into A, but B one should first check with A before inserting.
EDIT
I tried one of the answers below:
create table A(
id int primary key identity,
segment int not null
)
create table B(
id integer primary key identity,
segment int not null
)
--Andomar's suggestion
alter table B add constraint FK_B_SegmentID
foreign key (segment) references A(segment)
This produced the following error.
Maybe I was somehow unclear that segments is not-unique in A or B and can appear many times in both tables.
Msg 1776, Level 16, State 0, Line 11 There are no primary or candidate
keys in the referenced table 'A' that match the referencing column
list in the foreign key 'FK_B_SegmentID'. Msg 1750, Level 16, State 0,
Line 11 Could not create constraint. See previous errors.
You can create a foreign key relationship directly from B.SegmentID to A.SegmentID. There's no need for the extra table.
Update: If the SegmentIDs aren't unique in TableA, then you do need the extra table to store the segment IDs, and create foreign key relationships from both tables to this table. This however is not enough to enforce that all segment IDs in TableB also occur in TableA. You could instead use triggers.
You can ensure the segment exists in A with a foreign key:
alter table B add constraint FK_B_SegmentID
foreign key (SegmentID) references A(SegmentID)
To avoid rows in B without a segment at all, make B.SegmentID not nullable:
alter table B alter column SegmentID int not null
There is no need to create a Segments table unless you want to associate extra data with a SegmentID.
As Andomar and Mark Byers wrote, you don't have to create an extra table.
You can also CASCADE UPDATEs or DELETEs on the master. Be very carefull with ON DELETE CASCADE though!
For queries use a JOIN:
SELECT *
FROM A
JOIN B ON a.SegmentID = b.SegmentID
Edit:
You have to add a UNIQUE constraint on segment_id in the "master" table to avoid duplicates there, or else the foreign key is not possible. Like this:
ALTER TABLE A ADD CONSTRAINT UNQ_A_SegmentID UNIQUE (SegmentID);
If I've understood correctly, a given segment cannot be inserted into table B unless it has also been inserted into table A. In which case, table A should reference table Segments and table B should reference table A; it would be implicit that table B ultimately references table Segments (indirectly via table A) so an explicit reference is not required. This could be done using foreign keys (e.g. no triggers required).
Because table A has its own key I assume a given segment_ID can appear in table A more than once, therefore for B to be able to reference the segment_ID value in A then a superkey would need to be defined on the compound of A_ID and segment_ID. Here's a quick sketch:
CREATE TABLE Segments
(
segment_ID INTEGER NOT NULL UNIQUE
);
CREATE TABLE A
(
A_ID INTEGER NOT NULL UNIQUE,
segment_ID INTEGER NOT NULL
REFERENCES Segments (segment_ID),
A_data INTEGER NOT NULL,
UNIQUE (segment_ID, A_ID) -- superkey
);
CREATE TABLE B
(
B_ID INTEGER NOT NULL UNIQUE,
A_ID INTEGER NOT NULL,
segment_ID INTEGER NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY (segment_ID, A_ID)
REFERENCES A (segment_ID, A_ID),
B_data INTEGER NOT NULL
);