Re: Reordering the fields in a table

On Fri, 2021-04-16 at 22:33 -0500, Ron wrote:
> On 4/16/21 2:54 PM, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> > On Fri, 2021-04-16 at 16:15 +0000, Campbell, Lance wrote:
> > > I would love to see an enhancement to PostgreSQL where administrators had some way to reorder the fields in their tables.
> >
> > There is a misconception here.
> > Database tables are not designed for human consumption.
>
> Rubbish. Database tables are designed by humans to store data that humans
> care about.

I think you deliberately misunderstand me.
A database is not a GUI to render data.

> > If you want to present your table data in a readable format, you need a front end application.
> > Arranging table columns is the job of such a tool.
>
> Adding "ALTER TABLE MOVE COLUMN ... BEFORE/AFTER COLUMN ..." is pretty
> trivial, requiring "just another table", which stores the physical order of
> the columns, and also the order in which they are presented to the "user
> layer". I know this because such a feature was implemented 15+ years ago in
> Rdb/VMS.

It is *not* trivial.

If you want a solution and are not just trolling, why don't you use views?

Yours,
Laurenz Albe
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