Re: ALTER SEQUENCE: Missing feature?

Tom Lane wrote:

>"Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
>
>
>>>I guess it comes down to a philosophical thing. Should people need to
>>>know the PostgreSQL internals like the fact that a SEQUENCE is
>>>currently implemented as a TABLE, or should they just be able to do
>>>reasonable things like call ALTER SEQUENCE when they alter a sequence?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I would have to second this.
>>
>>
>
>same name. People will have to learn this fact about sequences
>eventually. For that matter we advertise it by using "SELECT * FROM
>sequence" as a way of inspecting sequence parameters; will you invent
>a replacement for that?
>
>
>
No because PostgreSQL uses SELECT for many things, including the
execution of functions.

>(2) If you do want to hide it at the cosmetic level you will have more
>work to do than this. ALTER TABLE also works (in some variants) on
>indexes; will you also invent ALTER INDEX?
>
No because from a logical (at least mine) perspective, Indices are a
table only thing. Sequences
are not always used in correlation with a table.

> See also GRANT/REVOKE; will
>you change that syntax too?
>

I am not sure how this is even relevant as GRANT / REVOKE can be applied
to a specific object?

> Will you invent new privilege names for
>sequences to hide the overlap with table privilege types? Will you
>forbid the old spellings of all this stuff (thereby breaking existing
>pg_dump files)?
>
>It just seems like a much bigger can of worms to open than the payback
>would justify.
>
>
That may be the case but couldn't you just have a generic function
within C that just calls out the
appropriate parameters per the relation? E.g; it knows that ALTER
SEQUENCE is actually
ALTER TABLE minus these six (whatever six they may be) parameters?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

> regards, tom lane
>
>

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