Re: Get rid of system attributes in pg_attribute?

Andreas Pflug <pgadmin(at)pse-consulting(dot)de> writes:
>>> Does anyone know of client code that actually pays attention to
>>> pg_attribute rows with negative attnums?

> Would those columns remain selectable for debugging/maintenance
> purposes, despite not appearing in system catalogs?

Certainly. They just wouldn't have entries in pg_attribute.

It occurs to me that without the explicit entries, we could stop
considering the system names to be reserved column names --- that is,
we could allow users to create ordinary columns by these names.
(The procedure for looking up a column name would be to first try in
pg_attribute, and if that failed to check an internal list of system
column names.) If you did make such a column, then you'd be unable to
get at the system column you'd masked in that particular table. I'm
unsure offhand if this would be a good thing or bad. Not having
reserved column names is certainly good, but masking a system column
is something you might regret when you need to debug. I suppose you
could always rename the conflicting column if so.

Making the system column names un-reserved would be a very good thing
from the point of view of being able to add more. I've wished for
some time that there were a system column exposing the tuple flags
(t_infomask). I've not dared to propose adding it because of the
likelihood of breaking people's table definitions, but if the name
needn't be reserved then that objection goes away.

regards, tom lane