Re: [HACKERS] Re-Name Attributes on Inheritance

Clark Evans <clark(dot)evans(at)manhattanproject(dot)com> writes:
> How difficult would it be to allow attribute
> names to be aliased when inheriting:
> ...
> Thoughts? Is this _that_ bad of an idea.

It seems like a horrible idea to me ;-). The point of inheritance
is that whatever else your derived class may be, it *IS A* parent-
class object as well, and anything that works on the parent class
will work on the subclass. In your example,
SELECT more_attrib FROM base where oldtag = something;
would work but
SELECT more_attrib FROM derived where oldtag = something;
would fail. That's not my idea of a derived class.

It's not clear exactly what you want to accomplish here, but I
wonder whether inheritance is the right model for the relationships
among the tables in your database at all. It seems like you are
trying to force-fit some other kind of relationship into the
inheritance model.

regards, tom lane