"Mariusz Majer" <mmajer(at)janmedia(dot)com> writes:
> There has been a table ecom2_orders for a while (~0.5m records). After
> executing query:
> ALTER TABLE ecom2_orders ADD COLUMN password_pdf character varying(50);
> when new rows are added, column password_pdf is filled with 'UL' value
> rather than null
Works fine here. Perhaps you have an incorrect build of 8.3.11?
Another possibility is that you omitted some important step.
Ordinarily, \d wouldn't show any explicit "default" modifier for a
column created as above. Maybe you did an ALTER SET DEFAULT in a
strange way?
regards, tom lane