OK, a followup. The problem is that your where clause in your update rule isn't selective enough, so you're actually trying to update all the rows that match just the one column in your where clause. Here's an example: Note that I've disabled your pk so you can see what's happening: drop table projectdata.data_business_list cascade; CREATE TABLE projectdata.data_business_list ( item_id int4 NOT NULL, business int4 NOT NULL, comments varchar(256) -- , CONSTRAINT data_business_list_pkey PRIMARY KEY (item_id, business) ); CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW projectdata.business_list AS SELECT t.item_id, t.business, t.comments FROM projectdata.data_business_list t; CREATE OR REPLACE RULE update_buslistview AS ON UPDATE TO projectdata.business_list DO INSTEAD UPDATE projectdata.data_business_list SET business = new.business, item_id=new.item_id, comments = new.comments WHERE item_id = old.item_id; -- and business=old.business; insert into projectdata.data_business_list (item_id, business, comments) values (1,2,'abc'), (1,3,'xyz'); UPDATE projectdata.business_list SET business = 13 Where item_id = 1 and business = 2; select * from projectdata.business_list ; You'll see the output is this: item_id | business | comments ---------+----------+---------- 1 | 13 | abc 1 | 13 | abc Note that even the comments are the same. However, if we make your where clause in your rule more selective, by removing the ; and -- in the middle of it, and it looks like this: WHERE item_id = old.item_id and business=old.business; and run the query again, we get: select * from projectdata.business_list ; item_id | business | comments ---------+----------+---------- 1 | 3 | xyz 1 | 13 | abc Now we test it with a real primary key and it also works the same. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/