Constraints: a Developer's Secret Weapon - Will Leinweber
Channel: PostgreSQL Europe
Date: 2018-06-28

Of all my regrets while building database-backed applications, not fully embracing database constraints sooner is one of the bigger ones. For far too long, I treated the db as little more than a dumb key-value store with joins.

Strong constraints turn your database into the last line of defense against bad data. Applications change several orders of magnitude more often than db schemas, and each change is a chance for corruption.

Constraints in Postgres come in many forms, from literally using the CONSTRAINT keyword to a large choice of datatypes. You'll come away from this talk understanding the pros and cons of type of constraint, and be ready to transform your application into a safer and more resilient system.