different sort order for primary key index

From: Paul Hartley <phartley(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: different sort order for primary key index
Date: 2009-10-14 07:12:44
Message-ID: 5afb04860910140012g79755d53t9eab8de2fc2bb1b3@mail.gmail.com
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I have a composite primary key for a table, let's call it (col1, col2).
When this table is created, obviously an implicit index is created for this
key. I would like the sort order of this index to be different for the two
columns -- if I were to create the index myself, I would pass on (col1, col2
DESC). The ALTER INDEX documentation suggests that it's not possible to
change the sort order of a column, so I can envision two ways to get around
this: 1) create a second UNIQUE index of (col1, col2 DESC), or 2) not
define a primary key and just specify a UNIQUE index separately. Primary
keys are basically restricted to being unique and non-null, but I'm unclear
if PostgreSQL treats primary keys differently from unique, non-null
constraints.

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