Comments on: PostgreSQL: How to Disable or Enable Foreign Key Constraint of a Table

By: Alexandre Paiva

Alexandre Paiva — Fri, 01 May 2020 14:42:21 +0000

Congratulations Patel, I´m a developer of system computer. I’m migrating from Oracle to PostgreSql, but I have to keep systems running two databases. Very good article, congratulations. I’ll be around more often. Thank you.

By: Tiago van den Berg

Tiago van den Berg — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 16:03:56 +0000

Great Post. Disabling triggers speed up batch processings.

For simple UPDATE cases where it is necessary, POSTGRES allows deferrable foreign keys. That means that a foreign key will be validated only after commiting transaction. So it is possible to modifiy all records that share a constrained key inside a transaction.

Its possible to change a FOREIGN KEY with the following command:

ALTER TABLE Table_Name ALTER CONSTRAINT Constraint_Name_Fk DEFERRABLE INITIALLY DEFERRED;

By: CV Kannan

CV Kannan — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 17:33:00 +0000

Thanks for the post. I tried to disable constraints on a table with the syntax provided & getting some errors :-

alter table AUTOMIC.RT disable TRIGGER ALL;
ERROR: syntax error at or near “alter”
LINE 2: alter table AUTOMIC.RT disable TRIGGER ALL;

ALTER TABLE AUTOMIC.RT DISABLE TRIGGER ALL;
ERROR: permission denied: “RI_ConstraintTrigger_c_17366” is a system trigger

By: Abhishek

Abhishek — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 04:22:03 +0000

I need the same action to be performed in the heroku. But heroku doesnot give the superuser access to us. But disabling the triggers requires the superuser access to psql. Is there any way that I can bypass the superuser access and perform the disable trigger. Or is there any other way than disabling the trigger to copy the records?

By: Anvesh Patel

Anvesh Patel — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 10:00:44 +0000

In reply to Szymon. yes

By: Szymon

Szymon — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 14:27:42 +0000

Postgres – can I DISABLE TRIGGER where I’m not relation owner?

By: David Climent

David Climent — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 17:23:24 +0000

Thanks a lot, you were so helpful!!

By: Ravikumar

Ravikumar — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 12:45:56 +0000

Dear Anvesh Patel,
I disable the triggers(constraint) and inserted the some data and again enable the trigger (constraint) then ???

By: Mściwój

Mściwój — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 07:35:59 +0000

drawbacks/missing bits
– DISABLE TRIGGER ALL requires ADMIN/SU account
– it speeds up inserts etc… but ultimately can lead to data inconsistency (exactly the example you put). Should cover the topic/best practice of validating it manually as enabling triggers don’t revalidate existing data.

By: Anvesh Patel

Anvesh Patel — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 06:50:46 +0000

In reply to :). Your welcome!