On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Dean Rasheed <dean.a.rash...@gmail.com> wrote: > That looks wrong to me, because a NOT NULL constraint is a column > constraint not a table constraint. The CREATE TABLE syntax explicitly > distinguishes these 2 cases, and only allows NOT NULLs in column > constraints. So from a consistency point-of-view, I think that ALTER > TABLE should follow suit. > > So the new syntax could be: > > ALTER TABLE table_name ALTER [COLUMN] col_name ADD column_constraint > > where column_constraint is the same as in CREATE TABLE (i.e., allowing > all the other constraint types at the same time). > > It looks like that approach would probably lend itself to more > code-reusability too, especially once we start adding options to the > constraint.
So you'd end up with something like this? ALTER TABLE foo ALTER COLUMN bar ADD CONSTRAINT somename NOT NULL That works for me. I think sticking the name of the constraint in there at the end of the line as Alvaro proposed would be terrible for future syntax extensibility - we'll be much less likely to paint ourselves into a corner with something like this. -- Robert Haas EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
