Re: [Fwd: Questions on 7.3 version for LinuxWorld]

On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 02:08, Justin Clift wrote:
> "In the release, Neil Conway comments that the new version contains a
> dependency tracking systems "that allows PostgreSQL to safely support
> many more subtle enhancements like the ability to drop columns". I'm
> unclear on the use of "safely" here - would you be able to elaborate on
> this comment further?"
>
> It's that we now have the ability to drop columns properly isn't it?

Well, that and the fact that (a) dropping columns is transaction-safe
(something a lot of the big commercial DBs don't even do, I believe) (b)
the system takes care of accounting for all the various dependancies the
column might have -- so it's difficult (not impossible) to break the
database by dropping a column that something else in the DB depends
upon.

I was trying to think of a response to the query, but couldn't find a
way to phrase the above in a way that was sufficiently non-technical.

> Perhaps we should just mention that one of the more requested features
> for PostgreSQL has been the ability to drop columns using the SQL92
> compliant syntax, so that was added this release?

Well, I think you can mention that, definately.

Cheers,

Neil
--
Neil Conway <neilc(at)samurai(dot)com> || PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC