Tranactions and viewing updated data

Postgresql 7.4.5 On RedHat 8

Is there a way to see what is happening with a process?

We have a 4gl module that maintains our database (ie creates the tables,
adds columns etc) - the problem (?) is that when it runs there is no
'visibility' of what's going on - for example I am just updating a
400,000 row table - the table has had 3 new columns appended to it - two
of the three columns need to be NOT NULL - so the the process does:

ALTER TABLE blah ADD COLUMN blah ....;

UPDATE blah
SET blah = 'blah' .....

ALTER TABLE blah ALTER COLUMN blah SET NOT NULL;

I can see from a ps statement that there is an UPDATE statement running,
but is there anyway of seeing how far through the update it is? I assume
that I can't see the data until the whole 'implied' transaction is
complete (ie all 400,000 rows updated) - is there a

The process has been running for 60 minutes and I don't want to kill it
if it's nearly complete (I have just realised that the update triggers
on the table weren't disabled before the run - so that is slowing it
down)