Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> writes:
> On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 04:44:54PM +0200, David Pradier wrote:
>> i'd like to know if it is better to use a primary key made of a couple
>> columns, than to use a constraint UNIQUE() on this couple columns,
>> regarding the sake of postgresql.
> In PostgreSQL, both primary keys and UNIQUE constraints are implemented
> via UNIQUE indexes, ergo there is no difference...
Just for the sake of completeness, there are exactly two differences:
* PRIMARY KEY implies NOT NULL on the key columns; UNIQUE doesn't.
* PRIMARY KEY creates a default target for foreign key references,
ie, if you've declared a primary key then you can later just say
"REFERENCES mytab" instead of spelling out "REFERENCES mytab(keycol)".
So "UNIQUE + NOT NULL" is pretty dang close to the same as "PRIMARY
KEY", but not quite.
regards, tom lane
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
match
