I'm attempting to remove constraints (primary/foreign keys) ahead of a massive import. Once the data has been imported, I would like to regenerate the constraints I removed. This process is recommended in PostgreSQL's documentation and incidentally would make import much more tenable. However, we've been unable to ascertain the best method to accomplish this. Currently, I have a couple of very large SQL scripts that contain ADD CONSTRAINT... and DROP CONSTRAINT... commands. The trouble is dropping the constraints; our foreign keys are greatly interdependent, and so a simple command to "DROP CONSTRAINT constraint_fkey" fails with "ERROR: cannot drop constraint constraint_[p/f]key on table table because other objects depend on it HINT: Use DROP ... CASCADE to drop the dependent objects too.". Sadly, merely adding CASCADE; does not fix our woes; since our DROP list contains all of our keys, if DROP CONSTRAINT 1 CASCADE; deletes constraint 5 on its way down, we'll error out once we hit DROP CONSTRAINT 5; with a "constraint does not exist". As you can see, we are at an impasse. I must learn the proper way to delete and recreate my keys; this won't even work on a table-by-table basis, since we still won't be able to delete interdependent objects without cascading, and then we've just moved the problem into a script farther on down the line. What's the best way for my person to remove these keys and be able to continue this project in peace? All help is deeply appreciated in hugs and gentle grazes. Signed Jeff -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
