HIGHArchitecturetrivialPostgreSQL

Tables Must Have Primary Keys

Tables without primary keys cannot use logical replication and have degraded query performance.

Why This Matters

Missing primary keys prevent logical replication, make UPDATE/DELETE operations slow, and break many ORMs and API generators.

Related Rules

RLS Disabled on Public Tables

Security

CRITICAL

Unindexed Foreign Keys

Performance

HIGH

Auth Users Table Exposed to API

Security

CRITICAL

Create Indexes Concurrently

Performance

HIGH

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Why This Matters

Tables without primary keys:

Cannot use logical replication (required for zero-downtime upgrades)
Force sequential scans for UPDATE/DELETE by row
Break PostgREST/Supabase API generation
Cause issues with pg_dump --inserts

Detection

Splinter lint 0004 (no_primary_key).

SELECT t.schemaname, t.tablename
FROM pg_tables t
LEFT JOIN pg_indexes i
  ON t.schemaname = i.schemaname
  AND t.tablename = i.tablename
  AND i.indexname LIKE '%_pkey'
WHERE i.indexname IS NULL
  AND t.schemaname = 'public';

Fix

-- Add a primary key to an existing table
ALTER TABLE your_table ADD PRIMARY KEY (id);
 
-- Or add a generated UUID PK
ALTER TABLE your_table
  ADD COLUMN id uuid DEFAULT gen_random_uuid() PRIMARY KEY;

Tools

Splinter lint 0004 (no_primary_key)

Tables Must Have Primary Keys

Why This Matters

Tags

Related Rules

Catch this automatically on every PR

Why This Matters

Detection

Fix

Tools