Re: MySQL vs PostgreSQL.

Jeff Davis <list-pgsql-hackers@empires.org>

From: Jeff Davis <list-pgsql-hackers@empires.org>
To: Antti Haapala <antti.haapala@iki.fi>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2002-10-11T21:05:46Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers, pgsql-general
> They also state that they have more sophisticated ALTER TABLE...
>
> Only usable feature in their ALTER TABLE that doesn't (yet) exist in
> PostgreSQL was changing column order (ok, the order by in table creation
> could be nice), and that's still almost purely cosmetic. Anyway, I could
> have used that command yesterday. Could this be added to pgsql.
>

I agree with your message except for that statement. MySQL alter table 
provides the ability to change column types and cast the records 
automatically. I remember that feature as really the only thing from MySQL 
that I've ever missed. 

Of course, it's not that wonderful in theory. During development you can 
easily drop/recreate the tables and reload the test data; during production 
you don't change the data types of your attributes.

But in practice, during development it's handy sometimes. 

Regards,
	Jeff