RE: [HACKERS] Well, then you keep your darn columns

All the databases that I've worked on (that actually have the ability to
drop columns) generate an error if the column to be dropped is part of a
key, and I think that is sound behaviour.

MikeA

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Loehr
To: Tom Lane
Cc: Hiroshi Inoue; Peter Eisentraut; pgsql-hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org
Sent: 00/01/24 08:13
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Well, then you keep your darn columns

Tom Lane wrote:

> Let's see: DROP COLUMN would have to mark the column invisible, remove
> any associated constraints (particularly NOT NULL) and indexes, and
> it'd be done. The parser would then have to ignore the column when
> doing column name lookups or expansion of '*', and it would have to
> insert a NULL value for the column when transforming INSERT or UPDATE.
> And that'd be just about it. I like it.

How would you handle multi-column indices that included the column
being dropped? E.g.,

create unique index foobar on mytable(foo,bar);

where the 'bar' column is then dropped...

Dropping all of that index would seem to be problematic.

Cheers,
Ed Loehr

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