Doc: note that statement-level view triggers require an INSTEAD OF trigger.

If a view lacks an INSTEAD OF trigger, DML on it can only work by rewriting
the command into a command on the underlying base table(s).  Then we will
fire triggers attached to those table(s), not those for the view.  This
seems appropriate from a consistency standpoint, but nowhere was the
behavior explicitly documented, so let's do that.

There was some discussion of throwing an error or warning if a statement
trigger is created on a view without creating a row INSTEAD OF trigger.
But a simple implementation of that would result in dump/restore ordering
hazards.  Given that it's been like this all along, and we hadn't heard
a complaint till now, a documentation improvement seems sufficient.

Per bug #15106 from Pu Qun.  Back-patch to all supported branches.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/152083391168.1215.16892140713507052796@wrigleys.postgresql.org

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_trigger.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_trigger.sgml
index 4bde8150122..42172ea1da2 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_trigger.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_trigger.sgml
@@ -410,6 +410,19 @@ UPDATE OF <replaceable>column_name1</replaceable> [, <replaceable>column_name2</
   </para>
 
   <para>
+   Statement-level triggers on a view are fired only if the action on the
+   view is handled by a row-level <literal>INSTEAD OF</literal> trigger.
+   If the action is handled by an <literal>INSTEAD</literal> rule, then
+   whatever statements are emitted by the rule are executed in place of the
+   original statement naming the view, so that the triggers that will be
+   fired are those on tables named in the replacement statements.
+   Similarly, if the view is automatically updatable, then the action is
+   handled by automatically rewriting the statement into an action on the
+   view's base table, so that the base table's statement-level triggers are
+   the ones that are fired.
+  </para>
+
+  <para>
    In <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> versions before 7.3, it was
    necessary to declare trigger functions as returning the placeholder
    type <type>opaque</>, rather than <type>trigger</>.  To support loading