Doc: clarify that CREATE TABLE discards redundant unique constraints.

The SQL standard says that redundant unique constraints are disallowed,
but we long ago decided that throwing an error would be too
user-unfriendly, so we just drop redundant ones.  The docs weren't very
clear about that though, as this behavior was only explained for PRIMARY
KEY vs UNIQUE, not UNIQUE vs UNIQUE.

While here, I couldn't resist doing some copy-editing and markup-fixing
on the adjacent text about INCLUDE options.

Per bug #16767 from Matthias vd Meent.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/16767-1714a2056ca516d0@postgresql.org

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_table.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_table.sgml
index 27a999c71bf77f6d958d2d1c95e264ad40ae74bf..c169d6158425ea95909709f47ccb45d88f1f2360 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_table.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_table.sgml
@@ -492,9 +492,11 @@ CREATE [ [ GLOBAL | LOCAL ] { TEMPORARY | TEMP } | UNLOGGED ] TABLE [ IF NOT EXI
      <para>
       The <literal>UNIQUE</literal> constraint specifies that a
       group of one or more columns of a table can contain
-      only unique values. The behavior of the unique table constraint
-      is the same as that for column constraints, with the additional
-      capability to span multiple columns.
+      only unique values. The behavior of a unique table constraint
+      is the same as that of a unique column constraint, with the
+      additional capability to span multiple columns.  The constraint
+      therefore enforces that any two rows must differ in at least one
+      of these columns.
      </para>
 
      <para>
@@ -503,10 +505,10 @@ CREATE [ [ GLOBAL | LOCAL ] { TEMPORARY | TEMP } | UNLOGGED ] TABLE [ IF NOT EXI
      </para>
 
      <para>
-      Each unique table constraint must name a set of columns that is
+      Each unique constraint should name a set of columns that is
       different from the set of columns named by any other unique or
-      primary key constraint defined for the table.  (Otherwise it
-      would just be the same constraint listed twice.)
+      primary key constraint defined for the table.  (Otherwise, redundant
+      unique constraints will be discarded.)
      </para>
     </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
@@ -531,11 +533,17 @@ CREATE [ [ GLOBAL | LOCAL ] { TEMPORARY | TEMP } | UNLOGGED ] TABLE [ IF NOT EXI
 
      <para>
       <literal>PRIMARY KEY</literal> enforces the same data constraints as
-      a combination of <literal>UNIQUE</> and <literal>NOT NULL</>, but
+      a combination of <literal>UNIQUE</> and <literal>NOT NULL</>.  However,
       identifying a set of columns as the primary key also provides metadata
       about the design of the schema, since a primary key implies that other
       tables can rely on this set of columns as a unique identifier for rows.
      </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Adding a <literal>PRIMARY KEY</literal> constraint will automatically
+      create a unique btree index on the column or group of columns used in the
+      constraint.
+     </para>
     </listitem>
    </varlistentry>