Created attachment 431246 [details]
Script for reproducing the error

Description of problem:

When using the channel.software.mergeErrata() API call on a channel cloned by the API call client.channel.software.clone() with the original_state=False option, a org.hibernate.exception.ConstraintViolationException is logged in /var/log/tomcat5/catalina.out

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

Satellite 5.3.0 all updates installed

How reproducible:

always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. run the attached script, for example
./mergeErrata-test.py rhel-i386-client-5 clone-test-rhel-i386-client-5
2.
3.
  
Actual results:

The data returned by mergeErrata contains all errata when the channel was recently cloned. But when removing some errata from the target (cloned) channel before calling mergeErrata again, the same result is returned, but the errata do not appear in the target channel. On channels with a higher number of errata like rhel-i386-server-5, I've seen "500 Internal Server Error".

Expected results:

mergeErrata should work like mergePackages, it should add the missing errata to the target channel.

Additional info:

As a workaround, it works to determine the latest update_date of source and target channel and then use mergeErrata with start and end date (each +1), which works.