Re: Reordering columns in a table

Actually, I'm pretty sure this is on the TODO. It can't really happen
until we have the ability to somehow divorce on-disk ordering from
what's presented in the catalog. It's not exactly rocket science to make
this happen, but it is quite a bit of work...

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 10:59:12AM -0600, John McCawley wrote:
> I believe that it makes a lot of practical difference, just like
> organizing related code into files, classes etc. is important for
> clarity. This isn't a trivial thing, and the other (sarcastic?)
> suggestion that I reorder my select misses the point.
>
> I think that having a good visual representation of the database is
> extremely important. So much so that I wrote my own tool to do it
> because one didn't exist for Postgres at the time. But I also think
> it's important for this visual representation to be tied to the database
> such that changes to the DB reflect in the visual representation and
> vice versa. That's why I was asking my question about column order. It
> would be bad to allow a user to move a column in the visual
> representation when it is unable to be modified in the database.
>
> I'm sure that it's a difficult feature to implement at the database
> level, and I'm sure there are sound technical reasons why it hasn't been
> implemented, but I do believe that it is a desirable feature.
>
>
> Berend Tober wrote:
>
> >John McCawley wrote:
> >
> >>Is there a way to change the order of columns in a table in Postgres
> >>after it has been created? ...
> >
> >
> >The best way to do it is when you have the opportunity to do a
> >restore, edit the pg_dump output between the dump and the restore
> >steps. There are other approaches that might not be feasible depending
> >on circumstances, like dropping and recreating the table and reloading
> >data, but you have to deal with foreign key and other dependencies and
> >so it is probably more work than justifiable for something that makes
> >no practical difference.
> >
> >Regards,
> >Berend Tober
> >
> >
> >
> >---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> >TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
> > choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
> > match
>
>
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--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
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