Re: Noob question about types and lists

xchris wrote:
> CREATE TYPE address AS
> (
> street VARCHAR(160),
> city INTEGER,
> cap INTEGER,
> country INTEGER (those are referring to other table)
> );
>
> and then composing table client
>
> CREATE TABLE client
> (
> id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
> name VARCHAR(80),
> surname VARCHAR(80),
> address address[3]
> ....
> UNIQUE (name,surname)
> );
>
>
> This doesn't work.
> I cannot create a list of types.
>
> I'm using a wrong syntax? or simply i cannot do this?

From the manuals...

8.10. Arrays
PostgreSQL allows columns of a table to be defined as variable-length
multidimensional arrays. Arrays of any built-in or user-defined base
type can be created. (Arrays of composite types or domains are not yet
supported, however.)

So - you can't do this at the moment.

However - I don't think you want to anyway. If you're going to use a
relational database, try a relational approach! Typically, you would do
something like:

CREATE TABLE client (id ..., name ...)
CREATE TABLE address (id ..., street ...)
CREATE TABLE client_address (client_id ..., address_id ...)

Then, you can add some foreign-key constraints so PG makes sure that the
ID numbers in client_address are all valid.

This makes it simple to get client names, client addresses or both together.

HTH
--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd