Constraints

Table of contents

• Table constraints

  • PRIMARY KEY

  • INDEX

  • CHECK

• Column constraints

  • NOT NULL

Table constraints

Table constraints are constraints that are applied to the table as a whole.

PRIMARY KEY

The PRIMARY KEY constraint specifies that a column or columns of a table can contain only unique (non-duplicate), non-null values.

Using columns of type object, geo_point, geo_shape or array as PRIMARY KEY is not supported.

To use a whole object as PRIMARY KEY each column within the object can be declared as PRIMARY KEY instead.

Adding a PRIMARY KEY column is only possible if the table is empty.

Warning

The verification if the table is empty and the schema update isn’t atomic. That means that it could be possible to add a primary key column to a table that isn’t empty.

If that is the case queries that contain the primary key columns in the WHERE clause will not behave as expected.

INDEX

The INDEX constraint specifies a specific index method on one or more columns.

It is possible to define more than one index per table, whether as a column constraint or a table constraint.

See also

Fulltext indices

CHECK

The CHECK constraint specifies that the values of certain columns must satisfy a boolean expression on INSERT and UPDATE.

Syntax:

[CONSTRAINT check_name>] CHECK (boolean_expression)

If CONSTAINT check_name is omitted, CrateDB generates a unique name automatically. This name is visible in table_constraints. This name can be used with DROP CONSTRAINT to remove the constraint.

The CONSTRAINT definition can either be inline with a column, like this:

cr> CREATE TABLE metrics1 (
...     weight REAL CONSTRAINT weight_is_positive CHECK (weight >= 0),
... );
CREATE OK, 1 row affected  (... sec)

Or, also inline, but without explicit name:

cr> CREATE TABLE metrics2 (
...     weight REAL CHECK (weight >= 0),
... );
CREATE OK, 1 row affected  (... sec)

Or, on a table level with explicit name:

cr> CREATE TABLE metrics3 (
...     weight REAL,
...     CONSTRAINT weight_is_positive CHECK (weight >= 0),
... );
CREATE OK, 1 row affected  (... sec)

Or without name:

cr> CREATE TABLE metrics4 (
...     weight REAL,
...     CHECK (weight >= 0),
... );
CREATE OK, 1 row affected  (... sec)

Multiple columns can be referenced:

cr> CREATE TABLE metrics5 (
...     weight REAL,
...     qty INTEGER,
...     CHECK (weight * qty != 1918),
... );
CREATE OK, 1 row affected  (... sec)
cr> CREATE TABLE metrics6 (
...     weight REAL,
...     qty INTEGER CHECK (qty * weight != 1918)
... );
CREATE OK, 1 row affected  (... sec)

Warning

The CHECK constraint conditions must be deterministic, always yielding the same result for the same input.

A way to break this is to reference a user-defined function in a CHECK expression, and then change the behavior of that function. Some existing rows in the table could now violate the CHECK constraint. That would cause a subsequent database dump and reload to fail.

Column constraints

Column constraints are constraints that are applied on each column of the table separately.

The supported column constraints are:

• NOT NULL

• PRIMARY KEY

• CHECK

NOT NULL

The NOT NULL constraint specifies that a column of a table can contain only non-null values.

The columns that are part of the primary key of a table are NOT NULL by default.