Re: BETWEEN Node & DROP COLUMN

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> Well, it seems isdropped is going to have to be checked by _any_ client,
> while holes in the number will have to be checked by _some_ clients.  Is
> that accurate?

What's your point?  No client that examines pg_attribute can be trusted
until it's been examined pretty closely (as in, more closely than
Christopher looked at pg_dump).  I'd prefer to see us keep the backend
simple and trustworthy, rather than pursue a largely-illusory idea that
we might be saving some trouble on the client side.  The clients are
less likely to cause unrecoverable data corruption if something is
missed.

If we were willing to remap attnums so that clients would require *no*
changes, it would be worth doing --- but I believe we've already
rejected that approach as unworkable.  I don't think "maybe you don't
need to change, but you'd better study your code very carefully anyway"
is a big selling point.
        regards, tom lane