Error on reference to inherited primary key

On Fri, 13 Apr 2001 rpijlman@spamcop.net wrote:

Creating tables this way:

A has a primary key
B inherits A
C references B

results in an error message on the CREATE TABLE for C (ERROR: PRIMARY KEY for referenced table "b" not found).

To reproduce:

create table A
(
id integer primary key
);

create table B
(
dummy integer
) inherits (A);

create table C
(
ref integer references B
);

psql:repro.sql:14: ERROR: PRIMARY KEY for referenced table "b" not found

AFAIK the SQL code is correct. B should inherit the primary key from A, so C should be able to reference B.

Primary keys/Unique constraints do not currently inherit (they should, but
there are some questions about how they should). If you want id to have
the properties of a primary key on B, you need to make a unique constraint
on B, I believe the NOT NULL is already inherited.

The workaround appears to be explicitly naming the primary key column:
create table C
(
ref integer references B(id)
);

This will not work for 7.1 since it checks for unique constraints (see
above)