Question

I am struggling with foreign keys in my DB, possibly it has something to do with inheritance?
So here’s the basic setup:

-- table address
CREATE TABLE address
(
  pk_address serial NOT NULL,
  fk_gadmid_0 integer NOT NULL, -- this table already exists, no problem here
  street character varying(100),
  zip character varying(10),
  city character varying(50),
  public boolean,
  CONSTRAINT address_primarykey PRIMARY KEY (pk_address),
  CONSTRAINT gadmid_0_primarykey FOREIGN KEY (fk_gadmid_0)
      REFERENCES adm0 (gadmid_0) MATCH SIMPLE
      ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE NO ACTION
)
WITH (
  OIDS=FALSE
);
ALTER TABLE address OWNER TO postgres;  

-- table stakeholder (parent)
CREATE TABLE stakeholder
(
    pk_stakeholder integer DEFAULT nextval('common_stakeholder_seq') NOT NULL,
    fk_stakeholder_type integer NOT NULL, -- this table also exists, no problem here
    name character varying(255) NOT NULL,
    CONSTRAINT stakeholder_primarykey PRIMARY KEY (pk_stakeholder),
    CONSTRAINT stakeholder_fk_stakeholder_type FOREIGN KEY (fk_stakeholder_type)
        REFERENCES stakeholder_type (pk_stakeholder_type) MATCH SIMPLE
        ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE NO ACTION
)
WITH (
    OIDS=FALSE
);
ALTER TABLE stakeholder OWNER TO postgres;  

-- table individual (child of stakeholder)
CREATE TABLE individual
(
    firstname character varying(50),
    fk_title integer, -- this table also exists, no problem here
    email1 character varying (100),
    email2 character varying (100),
    phone1 character varying (50),
    phone2 character varying (50),
    CONSTRAINT individual_primarykey PRIMARY KEY (pk_stakeholder),
    CONSTRAINT title_foreignkey FOREIGN KEY (fk_title)
        REFERENCES title (pk_title) MATCH SIMPLE
        ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE CASCADE
) INHERITS (stakeholder)
WITH (
    OIDS=FALSE
);
ALTER TABLE individual OWNER TO postgres;  

-- link between stakeholder and address
CREATE TABLE l_stakeholder_address
(
    pk_l_stakeholder_address serial NOT NULL,
    fk_stakeholder integer NOT NULL REFERENCES stakeholder,
    fk_address integer NOT NULL REFERENCES address,
    CONSTRAINT l_stakeholder_address_primarykey PRIMARY KEY (pk_l_stakeholder_address),
    CONSTRAINT l_stakeholder_address_fk_stakeholder FOREIGN KEY (fk_stakeholder)
        REFERENCES stakeholder (pk_stakeholder) MATCH SIMPLE
        ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE NO ACTION,
    CONSTRAINT l_stakeholder_address_fk_address FOREIGN KEY (fk_address)
        REFERENCES address (pk_address) MATCH SIMPLE
        ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE NO ACTION
)
WITH (
    OIDS=FALSE
);
ALTER TABLE l_stakeholder_address OWNER TO postgres;

So far, no problem. Then I tried to add some values:

INSERT INTO individual (pk_stakeholder, fk_stakeholder_type, name, firstname, fk_title, email1, email2, phone1, phone2) 
  VALUES (1, 8, 'Lastname', 'Firstname', 1, '[e-mail]', '', '', '');
INSERT INTO address (pk_address, fk_gadmid_0, street, zip, city, public)  
  VALUES (1, 126, 'Address', '', 'City', FALSE);
INSERT INTO l_stakeholder_address (pk_l_stakeholder_address, fk_stakeholder, fk_address)  
  VALUES (DEFAULT, 1, 1);

And finally I end up having an error (SQL state 23503) saying that the key (fk_stakeholder)=(1) is not existing in table “stakeholder”.
The first 2 inserts are fine, I can see them in the databases:

stakeholder:
pk_stakeholder | ...
----------------------
1              | ...

address:
pk_address | ...
--------------------
1          | ...

What am I doing wrong? I must admit that I am rather new to PostgreSQL (using 8.4) but I’m not even sure if that is an issue of PG at all, maybe I’m just lacking some basic database design understandings …
Either way, by now I tried pretty much everything I could think of, I also tried to make the FK deferrable as in PostgreSQL : Transaction and foreign key problem but somehow that doesn’t work either.

Answer 1

You can work around it using additional table individual_pks (individual_pk integer primary key) with all primary keys from both parent and child, which will be maintained using triggers (very simple — insert to individual_pks on insert, delete from it on delete, update it on update, if it changes individual_pk).

Then you point foreign keys to this additional table instead of a child. There’ll be some small performance hit, but only when adding/deleting rows.

Or forget inheritance and do it the old way – simply one table with some nullable columns.