How to constrain data

Change your constraint to

CHECK (type IN ('email','post','IRL','minutes'))

This will be converted by the parser into:

CHECK (type = ANY( ARRAY['email','post','IRL','minutes']))

That should do what you are looking at.

However I have to wonder if it wouldn't be better to do this:

CREATE TABLE comlog_types (
     type text
);

And then add a foreign key to enforce the constraint. This would make it easier to add types in the future.

All current RDBMS' tables can have CONSTRAINTS on columns. These constraints are checked every time data is inserted into the table. It can also check data against other tables.

We know that each Plate Type has certain number of Rows and Columns. We can enumerate all Rows and Columns for each Plate Type. So, when data is inserted, the DB can check if a certain row/column combination exists for a given Plate Type.

Lets create a set of tables:

create table Plate_Types (
Plate_Type_id int,
Plate_Size int,
Plate_row int,
Plate_col int)

This table holds description of every Plate size like this:

Id     Size   Row     Col
1       6       1       1    -- 2x3
1       6       1       2
...
1       6       2       3
5       1536    1       1    -- 32x48
...
5       1536    32      32

Then, in your main table from Alternative 1 we introduce a Foreign Key - a "link" to another table to check if row and column are valid for this Plate size.

create table MyTable (
well_id int,
plate_id int, 
plate_size int,
row_id int,
col_id int,
value real);

ALTER TABLE MyTable  
ADD CONSTRAINT FK_Plate_SizeCheck 
   FOREIGN KEY (Plate_size_id, Row_id, Column_id)
    REFERENCES Plate_Types (Plate_type_id, Plate_row, Plate_col);

This Constraint here does the following: for every inserted row DB goes to table Plate_Types and looks for combination of Plate_size_id, Plate_row and Plate_col. In other words, it checks if this Plate Size can have row I and column J. If there is no match, then the DB fires an error.

Please note that this is one of several possible solutions for data integrity enforcement for your example. Medical data often comes in huge volumes and performance of this particular design is different question.

PS. This is a shortened explanation for non-developers. Code as well as table design is for concept illustration only.