Re: Thoughts on "SELECT * EXCLUDING (...) FROM ..."?

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> some other idea - but only for psql
>
> we can define a special values, that ensure a some necessary
> preexecution alchemy with entered query
>
> \pset star_exclude_names col1, col2, col3
> \pset star_exclude_types xml, bytea, text(unlimited)
>

Sure, something like that could be useful too. It might be confusing
to users if they forget that they set an exclusion list, but there's
probably ways to work around that.

However, the nice thing about the feature being in SQL is that you can
use it from all clients, and even in other useful ways. COPY would be
an example (something I also do frequently):

COPY (SELECT * EXCLUDING (a, b, c) FROM <big query>) TO 'somefile.csv' WITH CSV;

Right now, if you want to exclude a column, you have to list all the
others out manually, or just dump everything and deal with it in an
external tool.

I generally agree with everyone that says using this in application
code is a bad idea, but I don't think that's reason alone to reject
the idea on its face.

eric