CREATE TABLE should support FOREIGN KEY constraint
Final Release Note
Description
Below is a functional spec of FOREIGN KEY
pasted from https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/ddl-constraints.html that describes what needs to be supported. It is possible that only a subset of the below functional spec might be implemented. Not sure at this point.
A foreign key constraint specifies that the values in a column (or a group of columns) must match the values appearing in some row of another table. We say this maintains the referential integrity between two related tables.
Say you have the product table that we have used several times already:
CREATE TABLE products (
product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
name text,
price numeric
);
Let's also assume you have a table storing orders of those products. We want to ensure that the orders table only contains orders of products that actually exist. So we define a foreign key constraint in the orders table that references the products table:
CREATE TABLE orders (
order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
product_no integer REFERENCES products (product_no),
quantity integer
);
Now it is impossible to create orders with non-NULL product_no entries that do not appear in the products table.
We say that in this situation the orders table is the referencing table and the products table is the referenced table. Similarly, there are referencing and referenced columns.
You can also shorten the above command to:
CREATE TABLE orders (
order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
product_no integer REFERENCES products,
quantity integer
);
because in absence of a column list the primary key of the referenced table is used as the referenced column(s).
A foreign key can also constrain and reference a group of columns. As usual, it then needs to be written in table constraint form. Here is a contrived syntax example:
CREATE TABLE t1 (
a integer PRIMARY KEY,
b integer,
c integer,
FOREIGN KEY (b, c) REFERENCES other_table (c1, c2)
);
Of course, the number and type of the constrained columns need to match the number and type of the referenced columns.
You can assign your own name for a foreign key constraint, in the usual way.
A table can have more than one foreign key constraint. This is used to implement many-to-many relationships between tables. Say you have tables about products and orders, but now you want to allow one order to contain possibly many products (which the structure above did not allow). You could use this table structure:
CREATE TABLE products (
product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
name text,
price numeric
);
CREATE TABLE orders (
order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
shipping_address text,
...
);
CREATE TABLE order_items (
product_no integer REFERENCES products,
order_id integer REFERENCES orders,
quantity integer,
PRIMARY KEY (product_no, order_id)
);
Notice that the primary key overlaps with the foreign keys in the last table.
We know that the foreign keys disallow creation of orders that do not relate to any products. But what if a product is removed after an order is created that references it? SQL allows you to handle that as well. Intuitively, we have a few options:
Disallow deleting a referenced product
Delete the orders as well
Something else?
To illustrate this, let's implement the following policy on the many-to-many relationship example above: when someone wants to remove a product that is still referenced by an order (via order_items), we disallow it. If someone removes an order, the order items are removed as well:
CREATE TABLE products (
product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
name text,
price numeric
);
CREATE TABLE orders (
order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
shipping_address text,
...
);
CREATE TABLE order_items (
product_no integer REFERENCES products ON DELETE RESTRICT,
order_id integer REFERENCES orders ON DELETE CASCADE,
quantity integer,
PRIMARY KEY (product_no, order_id)
);
Restricting and cascading deletes are the two most common options. RESTRICT prevents deletion of a referenced row. NO ACTION means that if any referencing rows still exist when the constraint is checked, an error is raised; this is the default behavior if you do not specify anything. (The essential difference between these two choices is that NO ACTION allows the check to be deferred until later in the transaction, whereas RESTRICT does not.) CASCADE specifies that when a referenced row is deleted, row(s) referencing it should be automatically deleted as well. There are two other options: SET NULL and SET DEFAULT. These cause the referencing column(s) in the referencing row(s) to be set to nulls or their default values, respectively, when the referenced row is deleted. Note that these do not excuse you from observing any constraints. For example, if an action specifies SET DEFAULT but the default value would not satisfy the foreign key constraint, the operation will fail.
Analogous to ON DELETE there is also ON UPDATE which is invoked when a referenced column is changed (updated). The possible actions are the same. In this case, CASCADE means that the updated values of the referenced column(s) should be copied into the referencing row(s).
Normally, a referencing row need not satisfy the foreign key constraint if any of its referencing columns are null. If MATCH FULL is added to the foreign key declaration, a referencing row escapes satisfying the constraint only if all its referencing columns are null (so a mix of null and non-null values is guaranteed to fail a MATCH FULL constraint). If you don't want referencing rows to be able to avoid satisfying the foreign key constraint, declare the referencing column(s) as NOT NULL.
A foreign key must reference columns that either are a primary key or form a unique constraint. This means that the referenced columns always have an index (the one underlying the primary key or unique constraint); so checks on whether a referencing row has a match will be efficient. Since a DELETE of a row from the referenced table or an UPDATE of a referenced column will require a scan of the referencing table for rows matching the old value, it is often a good idea to index the referencing columns too. Because this is not always needed, and there are many choices available on how to index, declaration of a foreign key constraint does not automatically create an index on the referencing columns.