Re: Alter field type?

From: Tino Wildenhain <tino(at)wildenhain(dot)de>
To: Bjørn T Johansen <btj(at)havleik(dot)no>
Cc: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Alter field type?
Date: 2004-08-26 08:31:48
Message-ID: 1093509108.1520.36.camel@Andrea.peacock.de
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Hi,

Am Do, den 26.08.2004 schrieb Bjørn T Johansen um 9:48:
> Is it possible to alter field type (from varchar to text) without making
> a new table?

In 8.0 I think.
Common practice in 7.4.x is:

BEGIN work;
ALTER TABLE yourtable ADD COLUMN tempcolumn text;
UPDATE yourtable SET tempcolumn = origcolumn;
ALTER TABLE yourtable DROP COLUMN origcolumn;
ALTER TABLE yourtable RENAME tempcolumn TO origcolumn;
COMMIT work;

Since text and (unlimited) varchar are quite the same,
you could get away with modifying the system tables.
But I would not recomment to do so.

Regards
Tino Wildenhain

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