Thread: Re: Feature Request
> Dear Mr Momjian > > Just a quick suggestion for an added feature: "DROP COLUMN columnname > FROM table..." and "ALTER COLUMN columname FROM table..." queries would > spare my hair when I make mistakes in table creation. We have the DROP, but will not appear in 7.0. -- Bruce Momjian | http://www.op.net/~candle pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 853-3000+ If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania19026
On Tue, Feb 22, 2000 at 08:23:17PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > Dear Mr Momjian > > > > Just a quick suggestion for an added feature: "DROP COLUMN columnname > > FROM table..." and "ALTER COLUMN columname FROM table..." queries would > > spare my hair when I make mistakes in table creation. > > We have the DROP, but will not appear in 7.0. One last little note on the whole DROP COLUMN discussion: A snip from Phil Greenspun's photo.net site: "Adding a column to a relational database table seldom breaks queries. Until Oracle 8.1.5, you weren't able to drop a column." My guess would be that Oracle found out internally what we've been discussing here: doing DROP COLUMN right is _hard_. Ross -- Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm@rice.edu> NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer Computer and Information Technology Institute Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005
At 04:40 PM 2/23/00 -0600, Ross J. Reedstrom wrote: >"Adding a column to a relational database table seldom breaks >queries. Until Oracle 8.1.5, you weren't able to drop a column." > >My guess would be that Oracle found out internally what we've been >discussing here: doing DROP COLUMN right is _hard_. They ended up providing both kinds of drop that have been discussed here, i.e. a slow one that actually mucks through the table getting rid of physical data, and a quick one that simply marks the column as being invisible resulting in it being ignored in the future. - Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza@pacifier.com> Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest Rare Bird Alert Serviceand other goodies at http://donb.photo.net.