Re: BUG #18516: Foreign key data integrity is not validated when reenabled the trigger on tables

On 2024-Jun-20, Mujjamil k wrote:

> Thank you, Laurenz, for your valuable feedback. If the enabling system
> trigger doesn’t check the data integrity with the parent table, then this
> syntax (ALTER TABLE DISABLE/ENABLE TRIGGER *ALL*) should be removed from
> PostgreSQL. Otherwise, it will create confusion for the users.

Well, we're not doing that.

This is documented; the page
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/sql-altertable.html
contains, under "DISABLE/ENABLE [ REPLICA | ALWAYS ] TRIGGER", the
following very explicit text:

: Disabling or enabling internally generated constraint triggers requires
: superuser privileges; it should be done with caution since of course the
: integrity of the constraint cannot be guaranteed if the triggers are not
: executed.

There's a reason you were forced to become superuser in order to do
this. Anytime you're forced to become superuser, you should take a step
back and think carefully what you're doing.

I think it's not a bad idea to suggest that we could have a new command
ALTER TABLE .. DISABLE CONSTRAINT, which can be run by the table owner
and paired with a later ALTER TABLE ENABLE CONSTRAINT, which verifies
the constraint.

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