"Abstract" table in PostgreSQL (inheritance)

Question

There are a lot of PostgreSQL inheritance questions on SO, but I wanted to be clear about my particular case. Suppose I have the following tables:

CREATE TABLE abstract_person (
    id bigint PRIMARY KEY,
    ver int NOT NULL,
    code varchar NOT NULL,
    id_country bigint NOT NULL,
    ...
);

CREATE TABLE abstract_person_phone (
    id bigint PRIMARY KEY,
    ver int NOT NULL,
    phone varchar NOT NULL,
    id_abstract_person bigint NOT NULL
);

CREATE TABLE individual (
    first_name varchar NOT NULL,
    last_name varchar NOT NULL,
    ...
    CONSTRAINT individual_pkey PRIMARY KEY (id),
    CONSTRAINT individual_id_country_fkey FOREIGN KEY (id_country) REFERENCES country (id),
    CONSTRAINT individual_unique UNIQUE (code) DEFERRABLE INITIALLY DEFERRED
) INHERITS (abstract_person);

There will be more inheriting tables, individual is just one example. The table abstract_person won't ever be written to directly. Am I correct in the following assumptions:

1. Child tables do not inherit unique, primary key, and foreign key constraints, but I have resolved that by declaring those constraints on child table directly.

2. About enforcing referential integrity between abstract_person and abstract_person_phone tables, I can do that with triggers. I can't use a trigger on parent table, I'd have to attach it to every child table, but I can use a single trigger function, like so:

   CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION person_deleted() RETURNS trigger AS $BODY$
   BEGIN
       DELETE FROM abstract_person_phone WHERE id_abstract_person = OLD.id;
       RETURN OLD;
   END;
   $BODY$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
   
   CREATE TRIGGER individual_deleted_trigger AFTER DELETE ON individual
       FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE person_deleted();
   

Answer 1

Yes, you're completely right. All these constraints are not propagated to child tables. As for triggers, you can use them on child tables as you wrote. And you could use a trigger on the parent table that would decide in which of the child tables it should put data on an insert query (or retrieve on select) based on some conditions