[Gnumed-devel] postgres inheritance

[J Busser]

I am trying to better understand postgres inheritance

in the example given at
http://www.physiol.ox.ac.uk/Computing/Online_Documentation/postgresql/inherit.html

Suppose you input "Honolulu City" and you wish it recorded that it is 
a capital (of Hawaii).

Does appending a row into"cities" cause a new row to automatically be 
created in "capitals"?
Does one then update what was a default "state" value to be "Hawaii"?

Or is a row not created until someone inputs "Hawaii"?

Are users prevented from accessing the child table "capitals" 
directly? Otherwise if they appended a row and input a value for 
"state" (say "Michigan") the resulting row risks having no connection 
to any row in "cities";  would an empty row be created in "cities"?