On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 08:14:12PM -0800, Stephan Szabo wrote: | > CREATE TABLE x (y text, z text, PRIMARY KEY(y,z)); | > CREATE TABLE a (b text, c text); | > ALTER TABLE a ADD FOREIGN KEY (b, c) REFERENCES x(z, y); ... | > I assert the problem here is that the FOREIGN KEY constraint | > construction should have *failed* since the *tuple* (z,y) | > does not infact match any unique key in table x. | | Looking at this more, I'm not sure that making it match the unique key | exactly helps information_schema.constraint_column_usage at least.
My problem is that the column order can be provided in the reference clause in a way that does *not* match a canidate key: in the example above, there isn't a primary key nor a unique key index on (z,y). | create table ta(a int, b int, primary key(a,b)); | create table tb(a int, b int, foreign key (a,b) references ta); | create table tc(a int, b int, foreign key (b,a) references ta); When <reference column list> is omitted, it implies that the primary key of the referenced table is used; hence, these are equivalent to: create table tb(a int, b int, foreign key (a,b) references ta (a,b)); create table tc(a int, b int, foreign key (b,a) references ta (a,b)); | I don't see how you can differentiate the foreign keys in the last two | without a position column, which doesn't seem to be in at least our | current view (although I haven't checked 2003 to see if they changed it). | Both of those should be valid, although the second is wierd. There isn't a problem with the examples you provided, although the resulting join isn't what the user intended. I think the ability to omit the <reference column list> is a bad idea; but alias, it is quite different from the problem I'm reporting. Very Best, Clark ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq