Re: [HACKERS] Re: ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>

From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
Cc: Hiroshi Inoue <Inoue@tpf.co.jp>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org>
Date: 2000-02-28T03:52:30Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
> > I would also change attname to '*already dropped %d' for
> > examle to avoid duplicate attname. 
> 
> Okay, just curious here, but ... what you are proposing *sounds* to me
> like half-way to what started this thread. (*Please* correct me if I'm
> wrong) ...
> 
> Essentially, in your proposal, when you drop a column, all subsequent
> tuples inserted/updated would have ... that one column missing?  So,
> instead of doing a massive sweep through the table and removing that
> column, only do it when an insert/update happens? 
> 
> Basically, eliminate the requirement to re-write every tuples, only those
> that have activity?

And I think the problem was that there was too much code to modify to
allow this.

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