Inconsistent trigger behavior between two temporal leftovers

Started by Sergei Patiakin10 days ago3 messageshackers
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#1Sergei Patiakin
sergei.patiakin@enterprisedb.com

Hi hackers,

The FOR PORTION OF thread [1]/messages/by-id/ec498c3d-5f2b-48ec-b989-5561c8aa2024@illuminatedcomputing.com noted the challenges in defining the
interaction between FPO and insert triggers.

Where an UPDATE FOR PORTION OF produces two temporal leftovers, I feel
trigger behavior should be
symmetrical between the two leftovers, whatever that behavior may be.

Currently a tuple-modifying BEFORE INSERT ROW trigger will fire for
both leftovers, but the second leftover's trigger
will see tuple modifications from the first leftover's trigger. I feel
this produces a surprising asymmetry:

```
CREATE TABLE products (id int, valid_at daterange, name text, revision int);

CREATE FUNCTION increment_product_revision() RETURNS trigger LANGUAGE
plpgsql AS $$
BEGIN NEW.revision := NEW.revision + 1; RETURN NEW; END; $$;

CREATE TRIGGER products_insert_trigger BEFORE INSERT ON products
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE FUNCTION increment_product_revision();

INSERT INTO products VALUES (1, '[2020-01-01, 2020-12-31)', 'widget', 0);

-- Update producing two leftovers
UPDATE products FOR PORTION OF valid_at FROM '2020-04-01' TO '2020-08-01'
SET name = 'gadget' WHERE id = 1;

SELECT * FROM products ORDER BY valid_at;
-- id | valid_at | name | revision
-- ---+-------------------------+--------+---------
-- 1 | [2020-01-01,2020-04-01) | widget | 2
-- 1 | [2020-04-01,2020-08-01) | gadget | 1
-- 1 | [2020-08-01,2020-12-31) | widget | 3
-- first leftover has revision=2 - ok
-- second leftover has revision=3 - surprising?
```

[1]: /messages/by-id/ec498c3d-5f2b-48ec-b989-5561c8aa2024@illuminatedcomputing.com

Best regards,
Sergei

#2Sergei Patiakin
sergei.patiakin@enterprisedb.com
In reply to: Sergei Patiakin (#1)
Re: Inconsistent trigger behavior between two temporal leftovers

Attaching a patch that makes the behavior more consistent.

Best regards,
Sergei

Attachments:

0001-Consistent-trigger-behavior-between-multiple-tempora.patchapplication/octet-stream; name=0001-Consistent-trigger-behavior-between-multiple-tempora.patchDownload+87-1
#3Paul Jungwirth
pj@illuminatedcomputing.com
In reply to: Sergei Patiakin (#2)
Re: Inconsistent trigger behavior between two temporal leftovers

On Wed, Apr 8, 2026 at 5:50 AM Sergei Patiakin
<sergei.patiakin@enterprisedb.com> wrote:

Attaching a patch that makes the behavior more consistent.

Thank you for the bug report!

I agree this seems surprising. The asymmetry doesn't bother me per se,
but each insert should have its own copy of the original row. It
doesn't make sense for a trigger firing on one leftover to affect the
other.

I wrote a fix before I saw yours, but they are nearly the same. I
tried to share more code between the first & subsequent passes, but
it's hard to do with the mapping case. So the fix you have here looks
great to me.

Yours,

--
Paul ~{:-)
pj@illuminatedcomputing.com