Thread: Dropping Fields In A Table

Thanks for the response to the last question, and also please let me know if
these questions are going to the right group, you all seem alot better than
these questions.

In what version of Postgre are you able to drop fields in a table (7.1?),
and is this the correct syntax:
ALTER TABLE tablename DROP COLUMN columnname;

And is their a way to change the type of column that a column is for
instance from CHAR to INT, and what is the syntax for that.  I looked up one
side of the documentation and down the other and their does not seem to be a
way.

Thanks again.

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Krog, Kenneth wrote:

> Thanks for the response to the last question, and also please let me know if
> these questions are going to the right group, you all seem alot better than
> these questions.
>
> In what version of Postgre are you able to drop fields in a table (7.1?),
> and is this the correct syntax:
> ALTER TABLE tablename DROP COLUMN columnname;
>
> And is their a way to change the type of column that a column is for
> instance from CHAR to INT, and what is the syntax for that.  I looked up one
> side of the documentation and down the other and their does not seem to be a
> way.

IIRC, The only way currently for both of these is to do something like:
create the new table and do something like insert into ... select
to move the data and then drop the old table and rename the new one into
place.

"Krog, Kenneth" <KAKrog@MassMutual.com> writes:

> In what version of Postgre are you able to drop fields in a table (7.1?),
> and is this the correct syntax:
> ALTER TABLE tablename DROP COLUMN columnname;
>
> And is their a way to change the type of column that a column is for
> instance from CHAR to INT, and what is the syntax for that.  I looked up one
> side of the documentation and down the other and their does not seem to be a
> way.

I'm pretty sure neither of these is currently implemented.  You need
to backup, drop and recreate the table, or do a ALTER TABLE RENAME/
CREATE TABLE AS/DROP TABLE dance.

-Doug
--
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm,
Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm.    -Dylan