foreign key constraints and inheritence

[Garrett Kalleberg <experimental@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have this structure:

CREATE TABLE invoicelineitemtypes (
    invoicelineitemtypeid varchar(36) PRIMARY KEY,
    otherstuff varchar(36)
);

CREATE TABLE invoicelineiteminventorytypes (
    moresetuff varchar(36)
)
INHERITS (invoicelineitemtypes);

CREATE TABLE invoicelines (
    invoicelineitemtypeid varchar(36) REFERENCES  
invoicelineitemtypes ON DELETE CASCADE,
    otherstuff varchar(36)
);

INSERT INTO invoicelineiteminventorytypes (invoicelineitemtypeid)  
VALUES ('1234');

The following insert:

INSERT INTO invoicelines (invoicelineitemtypeid) VALUES ('1234');

invokes

"insert or update on table "invoicelines" violates foreign key  
constraint "invoicelines_invoicelineitemtypeid_fkey"

Now, the rec with id '1234' is in the table  
invoicelineiteminventorytypes, but I can't wrap my head around the  
fact that

SELECT invoicelineitemtypeid FROM invoicelineitemtypes

yields the rec with invoicelineitemtypeid '1234', yet I can't  
reference it in the invoicelines INSERT statement.

Am I missing something? Is there a workaround for this?

PostgreSQL 8.0.1 running on OS X 10.4.2.



Garrett

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