Re: AW: ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN

On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Tom Lane wrote:

> The Hermit Hacker <scrappy(at)hub(dot)org> writes:
> > On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Zeugswetter Andreas SB <ZeugswetterA(at)wien(dot)spardat(dot)at> writes:
> >>>> My conclusion would be that we need both:
> >>>> 1. a fast system table only solution with physical/logical column id
> >>>> 2. a tool that does the cleanup (e.g. vacuum)
> >>
> >> But the peak space usage during cleanup must still be 2X.
>
> > Is there no way of doing this such that we have N tuple types in the
> > table? So that UPDATE/INSERTs are minus the extra column, while the old
> > ones just have that column marked as deleted?
>
> If we bite the bullet to the extent of supporting a distinction between
> physical and logical column numbers, then ISTM there's no strong need
> to do any of this other stuff at all.

what does/would it take to implement this?