On Tue, Feb 12, 2002 at 09:57:48AM +0100, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> Le Mardi 12 Février 2002 07:29, Christopher Kings-Lynne a écrit :
> > I can see the utility of CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW, however for me the DROP
> > COLUMN is way more useful. I can't begin to express how annoying it is to
> > not be able to drop a column. Sooo annoying...
>
> I recieved a mail from Neil Conway. Here it is :
>
> If ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN is important to you guys, why not use the
> existing code for it? Define _DROP_COLUMN_HACK__ and re-compile, it
> should work. I think the implementation is pretty messy: you, or
> someone from your time, is welcome to improve it, or suggest a better
> way to do things. This code is also experimental, so it could
> definately do with some testing and QA.
LOL! For ages I have been thinking that this is the obvious way of solving
this problem, wondering why no-one had done it yet. Well, obviously someone
did it and pointed out the flaws at the same time. In fact, it's even cooler
now with lazy vacuum, as it could clean out the column in the background,
replacing any values with NULL which, IIRC, don't take any space on disk,
just a bit in a bitmap.
For anyone wanting to know more about this, see the doc/TODO.detail/drop in
the source tree.
> My point is that, for this feature at least, there are certainly things
> that you guys can do to increase the likelihood of ALTER TABLE DROP
> COLUMN being in the 7.3 release.
It's certainly a nice feature, but I'm not dying for it. There are other
features I want first :).
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org>
http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.
