Re: [HACKERS] Column ADDing issues

> On Thu, Jan 27, 2000 at 12:52:43PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > > I suggest you be very cautious about messing with ALTER TABLE until you
> > > > understand why inheritance makes it such a headache ;-)
> > > 
> > > I'm just trying to get the defaults and constraints working. If
> > > inheritance stays broken the way it previously was, it's beyond my
> > > powers. But I get the feeling that people rather not alter their tables
> > > unless they have *perfect* alter table commands. I don't feel like arguing
> > > with them, they'll just have to do without then.
> > 
> > OK, so am I hearing we don't want ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN without it
> > working for inhertance.  Is this really the way we want things?  May as
> > well disable ADD COLUMN too because that doesn't work for inheritance
> > either.
> 
> Bruce, I hope your playing devil's advocate here. What I'm hearing,
> from this discussion, is a number of people interested in getting psql's
> object features defined in a useful way. As far as impacting Peter's work
> on getting ALTER commands working, I hope he understands that getting
> the commands working for the SQL92 case, and leaving inheritance broken
> (as it currently is) is far preferable to holding off for the *perfect*
> problem definition. I interpreted his last sentence to mean "they'll
> just have to do without *perfect* alter table commands", not "I'm not
> going to work on this at all anymore". At least, I sure that's what I
> hope he means :-)

I interpret it the other way.  ALTER TABLE DROP is currently disabled in
gram.y, and I believe he thinks that unless it is 100%, we don't want
it.  Now, I believe that is very wrong, and I think it is fine as it is,
but I can see why he would think that after the hard time he was given.

This whole thing has wrapped around, and now I am not sure what signal
we are sending Peter.  I personally like what he has done, seeing that
he did exactly what I suggested when he asked on the list months ago.  I
don't want to do a phantom attribute thing at this point with very
little payback.  I also am not terribly concerned about inheritance
either as it needs work in many areas.

However, I am only one voice, and no one is giving direction to him.

We had better decide what we want in this area.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
853-3000+  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill,
Pennsylvania19026