Re: BUG #9555: pg_dump for tables with inheritance recreates the table with the wrong order of columns

On Mar 13, 2014, at 7:19, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>> majid(at)apsalar(dot)com wrote:
>>> Reproduction case:
>>>
>>> create table A(a int, b int, c int);
>>> create table B(a int, c int);
>>> alter table A inherit B;
>
>> I wonder if the real fix here is to have ALTER / INHERIT error out of
>> the columns in B are not a prefix of those in A.
>
> Years ago, we sweated quite a lot of blood to make these cases work.
> I'm not thrilled about throwing away all that effort because one person
> doesn't like the behavior.

That makes sense, but then it would make sense to document this behavior under ALTER TABLE ... INHERIT, and possibly change its behavior so it reorders the columns on the source database’s data dictionary (I am not sure whether the logical column order has to match the physical order already embedded in the data files).

Thanks,

--
Fazal Majid
CTO, Apsalar Inc.