Re: full featured alter table?

 >>> You can specify the order that columns are output now. The real
 >>> underlying
 >>> order should really be up to postgres to decide based on what is
 >>> most
 >>> efficient.
 >>
 >> how can i specify it?
 >> i think we all ment cosmetical changes, not the "real" underlying
 >> order which should be up to postgresql of course!

let's express it another way: we want to define the order of the columns
when they are shown in tools like phpPgAdmin or PgAdminII.

there should be some statement which is used by the tools to query the
list of columns in the table - the resultset contains the columns in a
defined order which is - in most cases - the order in which the columns
were created. we'd like to be abled influence the order of the columns
within that resultset.

 >>> If you were thinking about the order you get when you use * as a
 >>> shorthand
 >>> for all of the columns, perhaps there could be some way to change
 >>> that
 >>> without actually changing the order of the columns in the table.
 >>
 >> "select *" should refelect the cosmetical order of the columns.
 >> "select *" could be tranformed into something like "select col1,
 >> col2, ..." according to the cosmetical order that's defined.
 >> if that's not the case at the moment, i don't care, because i don't
 >> use "select *" by assuming any column-order for the reasons you
 >> already mentioned.
 >
 > It sounds what you are looking for is soem way to set the order so
 > that you can save some typing when doing adhoc queries?

no - i don't do any "select *" - it's just a cosmetical thing, because
after some time - especially when you have to perform the discussed
steps to change a column definition - your columns will mix-up.
Usually the order of the columns in a table follows some intension of
the user who created it.