Re: [HACKERS] ONLY

At 04:07 PM 2/7/00 +1100, Chris Bitmead wrote:

>BTW, I think in SQL3 the oid column is supposed to be called "IDENTITY".
>Maybe, but who can read this thing? (Can we find the people who wrote
>this document and have them taken out and flogged?).

It's not ALL that bad, my earlier comments were partly tongue in cheek.

Mostly, it is obvious that you have to digest the whole thing in order to
correctly understand bits and pieces. That was Jan's problem with
"NO ACTION" and RI, leading him to believe that this meant he should
leave dangling table references after deleting a referenced table. I
knew that was wrong, and figured it had to do with the general definition
of integrity constraints (i.e. there's a predicate function applied to
the enttire database that must be true at strictly-defined times, and if not,
errors spew forth and transactions roll backwards) but I'm damned if I
could find it. Thus our difficulty in deciding what PG should do for
such cases.

But I know it is there... :) And Jan was as relieved as me to learn
that it must be (because Date tells us so). Still, neither of us has
seen it, we're just trusting Date and common sense (occam's razor,
when in doubt, do the right thing).

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.