Create a row-wise conditional view

Hi,

I'm trying to create a set of views like this. Let's say I have 2 tables
with the same structure. One of them is the "master" table (left side) and
the other one has a different "version" of the fields only for certain rows.

I want to create a view that would have the same structure as the tables,
holding all the records from the master table but when there's a record
matching on the secundary then use those.

This doesn't work on Postgresql 8.0.3 but is very close to what I need:
CREATE VIEW work_view AS
SELECT CASE WHEN table2.id <http://table2.id> IS NULL THEN table1.*
ELSE table2.*
END

I can use COALESCE but this is field after field or compute multiple CASEs
where the same condition is evaluated again and again, field after field and
row after row...

Any ideas?
Thanks

Pedro

Thank you