Re: NOT ENFORCED constraint feature

On Wed, Oct 9, 2024 at 2:44 PM Joel Jacobson <joel(at)compiler(dot)org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 8, 2024, at 11:06, Amul Sul wrote:
> > The attached patch proposes adding the ability to define CHECK and
> > FOREIGN KEY constraints as NOT ENFORCED.
>
> Thanks for working on this!
>
> > Adding NOT ENFORCED to CHECK constraints is simple, see 0001 patch,
>
> I've looked at the 0001 patch and think it looks simple and straight forward.
>

Thanks for looking into it.

> > but implementing it for FOREIGN KEY constraints requires more code due
> > to triggers, see 0002 - 0005 patches.
>
> I can't say that much yet about the code changes in 0002 - 0005 yet,
> but I've tested the patches and successfully experimented with the feature.
>
> Also think the documentation is good and sound. Only found a minor typo:
> - Adding a enforced <literal>CHECK</literal> or <literal>NOT NULL</literal>
> + Adding an enforced <literal>CHECK</literal> or <literal>NOT NULL</literal>
>

Ok, will fix it in the next version.

> > There are various approaches for
> > implementing NOT ENFORCED foreign keys, what I thought of:
> >
> > 1. When defining a NOT ENFORCED foreign key, skip the creation of
> > triggers used for referential integrity check, while defining an
> > ENFORCED foreign key, remain the same as the current behaviour. If an
> > existing foreign key is changed to NOT ENFORCED, the triggers are
> > dropped, and when switching it back to ENFORCED, the triggers are
> > recreated.
> >
> > 2. Another approach could be to create the NOT ENFORCED constraint
> > with the triggers as usual, but disable those triggers by updating the
> > pg_trigger catalog so that they are never executed for the check. And
> > enable them when the constraint is changed back to ENFORCED.
> >
> > 3. Similarly, a final approach would involve updating the logic where
> > trigger execution is decided and skipping the execution if the
> > constraint is not enforced, rather than modifying the pg_trigger
> > catalog.
> >
> > In the attached patch, the first approach has been implemented. This
> > requires more code changes but prevents unused triggers from being
> > left in the database and avoids the need for changes all over the
> > place to skip trigger execution, which could be missed in future code
> > additions.
>
> I also like the first approach, since I think it's nice the pg_trigger
> entires are inserted / deleted upon enforced / not enforced.
>
> > The ALTER CONSTRAINT operation in the patch added code to handle
> > dropping and recreating triggers. An alternative approach would be to
> > simplify the process by dropping and recreating the FK constraint,
> > which would automatically handle skipping or creating triggers for NOT
> > ENFORCED or ENFORCED FK constraints. However, I wasn't sure if this
> > was the right approach, as I couldn't find any existing ALTER
> > operations that follow this pattern.
>
> I think the current approach of dropping and recreating the triggers is best,
> since if we would instead be dropping and recreating the FK constraint,
> that would cause problems if some other future SQL feature would need to
> introduce dependencies on the FK constraints via pg_depend.
>

Yes, that was my initial thought as well, and recreating the
dependencies would be both painful and prone to bugs.

Regards,
Amul