I would like to add a check constraint to a very large table. Something like:
ALTER TABLE "accounts" ADD CONSTRAINT "positive_balance" CHECK ("balance" >= 0);
Unfortunately PostgreSQL 9.3 blocks reads or writes until the constraint check has been completed. I verified this by starting a transaction, running the ALTER TABLE
, then opening a second transaction and checking that I couldn't read or write from the table until the first transaction completed.
Is there any way I can add this CHECK
constraint without locking the table?