On Dec 21, 2007, at 15:19 , Bryan Wilkerson wrote:

I've implemented in my model code but it has some deadlock issues and I really strongly have believed all along that this belongs in the db anyway. Implementing the above with triggers is a tricky problem because the trigger would key off the priority change and the successive updates would recusively trigger.


I recommend wrapping the manipulations in functions and allow access to the table only through these functions. Then you can be sure that the operations are handled within a transaction and it's all in the database.

If you have a unique constraint on priority, you'll probably want to do something along the lines of (untested)

CREATE FUNCTION new_workitem(in_priority integer, in_workitem text)
RETURNS void
LANGUAGE SQL AS $func$
UPDATE tablename
  SET priority = -1 * (priority + 1)
  WHERE priority >= 2;
INSERT INTO tablename (priority, workitem)
   VALUES (2, 'new task');
UPDATE tablename
  SET priority = ABS(priority)
  WHERE priority < 0;
$func$;

This is in the same vein as methods to maintain nested set-encoded hierarchies, which are also order-dependent.

Michael Glaesemann
grzm seespotcode net



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