From: "Tom Haddon" <tom@betterhealthfoundation.org>
To: "Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>,
	<pgsql-sql@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: ALTER TABLE follow up
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 11:30:53 -0700
Message-ID: <NEBBIHDGCLBEJMPFAMLACENDCHAA.tom@betterhealthfoundation.org>
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In-Reply-To: <GNELIHDDFBOCMGBFGEFOCEIPCDAA.chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>

Hi Chris,

Thanks for that. I have one final question (for the moment).

How do I also alter the id column properties to reflect as below?

DEFAULT nextval('agency_contact_info_id_key'::text)

Is there an SQL query for this, or another manual "twiddle"?

Thanks, Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Kings-Lynne [mailto:chriskl@familyhealth.com.au]
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 7:02 PM
To: Tom Haddon; pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: RE: [SQL] ALTER TABLE follow up


Hi Tom,

> A follow up to the ALTER TABLE question last week. I had asked why I was
> getting an error message using the ALTER TABLE to add a PRIMARY
> KEY, and was
> told that this wasn't supported in 7.1.x. I've upgraded to 7.2.1 and now
> when I use the following SQL:
>
> ALTER TABLE "agency_contact_info" ADD CONSTRAINT
> "agency_contact_info_pkey"
> PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL ("id");

I have no idea where you got that NOT NULL bit from - it's not in the
manual.  In fact Posgres 7.2 has no sql function for changing the null
status of a column.  You can manually twiddle the catalogs however - make
SURE there's no NULL values in the column first:

UPDATE pg_attribute SET attnotnull = true WHERE attrelid = (SELECT oid FROM
pg_class WHERE relname = 'agency_contact_info') AND attname = 'id';

Now just go:

ALTER TABLE agency_contact_info ADD PRIMARY KEY (id):

Chris