Jim,
>
> Yes, I think aliasing (especially at the table level) would be handy.
We already *have* table aliases. They're called "views". What we don't
have is column aliases.
However, for column aliases to be really useful for more than just
application refactoring, we'd have to support calculated column aliases,
which is much more complicated.
>
> And +1 on reviving newsysviews, but of course I'm biased... ;P
Oh, right, forgot to credit you as well. Sorry.
--Josh