On Sun, 2010-01-17 at 21:48 +0100, Mathieu De Zutter wrote: > Can you explain this then: > OK: select * from parent where (c,n) = ('b',0); > NOT OK: select * from parent where (c,n)::y = ('b',0)::y; Once you pass (c,n) into the cast, you get out something new that's neither c nor n. It's as if you said "n1 + n2 = 5 + 3". You are able to recognize that a record type is special, because you can get the original components even after the transformation (unlike +, which is irreversible). That allows you to transform the predicate "(c,n)::y = ('b',0)::y" into an equivalent** form "c = 'b' AND n = 0", which makes the contradiction with the CHECK constraint apparent. The optimizer isn't that smart though. You're following a chain of reasoning, and usually optimizers only go so far, because that can get expensive, quickly. ** That's actually not really equivalent in the general case, anyway, because of NULLs. "('a', NULL)::y = ('a', NULL)::y" is TRUE, but "'a' = 'a' AND NULL = NULL" is NULL. Interestingly, "('a', NULL) = ('a', NULL)" is NULL as well (which might be a bug). So there isn't some nice canonical form for "record = record" that will solve all of these problems, which makes the optimization problem a lot harder. Regards, Jeff Davis -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general