Reordering the fields in a table - Mailing list pgsql-admin

If there is a way to do this please let me know.

PostgreSQL Request

I would love to see an enhancement to PostgreSQL where administrators had some way to reorder the fields in their tables.  As a software developer I can easily write a tool to reorder the fields in a table if there were no foreign keys.  But foreign keys throw an enormous hurdle in my way.

Why is this a big deal?

Sixteen years ago when I started working at the University of Illinois I told my boss, “if you give me thirty days I can build a platform that will allow me to cut at least 50% off of the development time of your standard internal web business app.”  I built it.  Today I personally created/manage/develop 17 services that provide over 120 million pages of web content a year.  I can jump into this infrastructure and make a change in an hour or two that would take most people weeks to change.  The one issue that causes me the most grief is the readability of tables.  When you manage 17 services where you are continually tweaking the system you find the tables are very unreadable.  New fields are continually added to the bottom of tables. They are just not readable.

The most underappreciated elements in software design is the ongoing need to be able to easily read what you are working with.  Table can really become a mess.  It would be the most amazing enhancement to be able to order the fields of any table with a command.  I know today this is probably not a top priority to most developers and DBAs.  They work in an environment where one person might work on just one or two services.  But as development strategies change over time more people will be developing software faster and faster.  Table field readability will become more important.

Thanks,

LANCE CAMPBELL

Software Architect

Web Services

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