Thread: questions on ALTER TABLE ... OWNER
Hi all, Currently, ALTER TABLE ... OWNER will change the ownership of a table, view, sequence or index -- despite the fact that its name hints that it is only for 'altering tables'. 1) Is this behavior optimal? There is clearly a need to change the ownership of relations other than tables, but it seems to me that pushing this functionality into ALTER TABLE is unintuitive. On the other hand, creating ALTER INDEX ... OWNER, ALTER SEQUENCE ... OWNER, etc. seems like overkill. 2) Should we perhaps warn the user, if they use 'ALTER TABLE ... OWNER' on a non-table relation? 3) Should this behavior be documented? Currently the docs on ALTER TABLE ... OWNER say nothing about changing the ownership of non-table relations. Cheers, Neil -- Neil Conway <neilconway@rogers.com> PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC
nconway@klamath.dyndns.org (Neil Conway) writes:
> Currently, ALTER TABLE ... OWNER will change the ownership of a table,
> view, sequence or index -- despite the fact that its name hints that it
> is only for 'altering tables'.
> 1) Is this behavior optimal? There is clearly a need to change the
> ownership of relations other than tables, but it seems to me that
> pushing this functionality into ALTER TABLE is unintuitive.
> On the other hand, creating ALTER INDEX ... OWNER, ALTER SEQUENCE ...
> OWNER, etc. seems like overkill.
Definitely overkill. I'd say tweak the docs and leave the code alone.
regards, tom lane
On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 02:03:38PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote: > nconway@klamath.dyndns.org (Neil Conway) writes: > > Currently, ALTER TABLE ... OWNER will change the ownership of a table, > > view, sequence or index -- despite the fact that its name hints that it > > is only for 'altering tables'. > > > 1) Is this behavior optimal? There is clearly a need to change the > > ownership of relations other than tables, but it seems to me that > > pushing this functionality into ALTER TABLE is unintuitive. > > > On the other hand, creating ALTER INDEX ... OWNER, ALTER SEQUENCE ... > > OWNER, etc. seems like overkill. > > Definitely overkill. You're probably right -- although there is a symmetry between 'create sequence', 'alter sequence', and 'drop sequence', rather than 'create sequence', 'alter table' and 'drop sequence'. BTW, the same semantic problems also apply to ALTER TABLE ... rename. > I'd say tweak the docs and leave the code alone. Okay, fixed. I also corrected another minor inaccuracy in the ALTER TABLE docs. Bruce/Tom: Please apply for 7.2.1 and 7.3. Cheers, Neil -- Neil Conway <neilconway@rogers.com> PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC
Attachment
At 12:24 19/02/02 -0500, Neil Conway wrote: >Hi all, > >Currently, ALTER TABLE ... OWNER will change the ownership of a table, >view, sequence or index -- despite the fact that its name hints that it Does it automatically alter the ownership of items 'owned' by the table (eg. PK indexes & serial sequences) when a table owner is altered? ---------------------------------------------------------------- Philip Warner | __---_____ Albatross Consulting Pty. Ltd. |----/ - \ (A.B.N. 75 008 659 498) | /(@) ______---_ Tel: (+61) 0500 83 82 81 | _________ \ Fax: (+61) 0500 83 82 82 | ___________ | Http://www.rhyme.com.au | / \| | --________-- PGP key available upon request, | / and from pgp5.ai.mit.edu:11371 |/
On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 07:39:18AM +1100, Philip Warner wrote: > At 12:24 19/02/02 -0500, Neil Conway wrote: > >Hi all, > > > >Currently, ALTER TABLE ... OWNER will change the ownership of a table, > >view, sequence or index -- despite the fact that its name hints that it > > Does it automatically alter the ownership of items 'owned' by the table > (eg. PK indexes & serial sequences) when a table owner is altered? No, AFAICT. Should it? Cheers, Neil -- Neil Conway <neilconway@rogers.com> PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC
Sorry, 7.3 only. Doc changes aren't really done for minor releases. Your patch has been added to the PostgreSQL unapplied patches list at: http://candle.pha.pa.us/cgi-bin/pgpatches I will try to apply it within the next 48 hours. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Neil Conway wrote: > On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 02:03:38PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote: > > nconway@klamath.dyndns.org (Neil Conway) writes: > > > Currently, ALTER TABLE ... OWNER will change the ownership of a table, > > > view, sequence or index -- despite the fact that its name hints that it > > > is only for 'altering tables'. > > > > > 1) Is this behavior optimal? There is clearly a need to change the > > > ownership of relations other than tables, but it seems to me that > > > pushing this functionality into ALTER TABLE is unintuitive. > > > > > On the other hand, creating ALTER INDEX ... OWNER, ALTER SEQUENCE ... > > > OWNER, etc. seems like overkill. > > > > Definitely overkill. > > You're probably right -- although there is a symmetry between 'create > sequence', 'alter sequence', and 'drop sequence', rather than 'create > sequence', 'alter table' and 'drop sequence'. > > BTW, the same semantic problems also apply to ALTER TABLE ... rename. > > > I'd say tweak the docs and leave the code alone. > > Okay, fixed. I also corrected another minor inaccuracy in the ALTER > TABLE docs. > > Bruce/Tom: Please apply for 7.2.1 and 7.3. > > Cheers, > > Neil > > -- > Neil Conway <neilconway@rogers.com> > PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC [ Attachment, skipping... ] > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate > subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your > message can get through to the mailing list cleanly -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us 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