Re: Feature Proposal: Column-Level DELETE Operation in SQL

Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com>

From: Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com>
To: Abhishek Hatgine <hatgineabhishek99@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Date: 2025-04-23T16:47:50Z
Lists: pgsql-general

> On Apr 21, 2025, at 09:53, Abhishek Hatgine <hatgineabhishek99@gmail.com> wrote:
> However, there’s no specific, expressive way to delete the value of a column directly. The typical workaround is to use:
> UPDATE Customers SET Address = NULL WHERE CustomerID = 103;

I'm not sure I agree that's unexpressive.  When you consider the relational model, it's not clear to me what "deleting the value of a column" means.  It could be:

1. Removing the current value, which begs the question of "replacing it with what?"
2. Dropping the column, for which we already have ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN.

Can you give a bit more detail about what the state of the table is when you have "deleted the value of a column directly"?