On 01/12/2016 12:12, Francisco Olarte wrote:
On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 12:56 PM, Chris Withers <ch...@simplistix.co.uk> wrote:
So, first observation: if I make room nullable, the exclude constraint does
not apply for rows that have a room of null. I guess that's to be expected,
right?

I would expect it, given:

n=> select null=null, null<>null, not (null=null);
 ?column? | ?column? | ?column?
----------+----------+----------
          |          |
(1 row)

Those are nulls,

Yes, it's a shame psql has the same repr for null and empty-string ;-)

n=> select (null=null) is null, (null<>null) is null, (not (null=null)) is null;
 ?column? | ?column? | ?column?
----------+----------+----------
 t        | t        | t
(1 row)

I.e., the same happens with a nullable unique column, you can have one
of each not null values and as many nulls as you want.

SQL null is a strange beast.

Sure, I think that was the answer I was expecting but not hoping for...

However, my "next question" was the one I was really hoping for help with:

Working with the exclude constraint example from https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/rangetypes.html:

CREATE EXTENSION btree_gist;
CREATE TABLE room_reservation (
    room text,
    during tsrange,
    EXCLUDE USING GIST (room WITH =, during WITH &&)
);

Next question: if lots of rows have open-ended periods
(eg: [, 2010-01-01 15:00) or [2010-01-01 14:00,)), how does that affect the performance of the btree gist index backing the exclude constraint?

Tom Lane made a comment on here but never followed up with a definitive answer. Can anyone else help?

cheers,

Chris


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