Re: idea: storing view source in system catalogs

"Robert Haas" <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> I think the real problem here is that PostgreSQL is very finicky about
> what operations you can perform on a view.  If I have a table foo and
> I define a view bar that uses foo and a view baz that uses bar, I can
> add a column to foo without a problem, and, similarly, I can also drop
> or alter a column in foo that is not used by bar.  But the same is not
> true of bar.

Yeah.  The current restrictions were set when CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW
was first implemented, and at that time we didn't have very much
ALTER TABLE capability at all; the view restrictions mirror what we
could do with a table at the time.  It would be worth revisiting
that to make it square up with what you can now do to a table.
        regards, tom lane