Can Materialized Views in PostgreSQL inherit? - postgresql

Question

I use PostgreSQL for time series data. There is an Event table and partitioned tables like Event_2016, Event_2017 which inherit from Event with a CONSTRAINT CHECK for the date range. So when querying the Event table, PostgreSQL uses only the child tables that are needed.
To roll up events I use an EventByDay materialized view. Refreshing this requires reading from all Event_* tables.
Can I use Materialized Views the same way as tables above to limit the amount of data in each Materialized View? (EventByDay_2016 inherits from EventByDay).

Answer 1

No, a MVIEW can not participate in table inheritance.
But you can create a (regular) child table and then use insert into .. select ... using the query from the MVIEW. If you want to store the MVIEW's query in the database then create a view that you use for populating the child table.
Something like this:
Initial setup:
create view v_event_by_day_2016
as
-- this is the complete query from your MVIEW
select ...;
create table event_by_day_2016
as
select *
from v_view_one;
alter table event_by_day_2016 inherit event_by_day;
alter table event_by_day_2016 add constraint check (...);
Refresh the table:
truncate table event_by_day_2016;
insert into event_by_day_2016
select *
from v_event_by_day_2016;
Alternatively you can use delete to so that the data in the child table can be refreshed in a transactional manner.