Re: Adding columns to a view

On 28 Dec 2005, Florian G. Pflug wrote:

> >I could think of a few situations where extending a view might be
> >useful, and I'd appreciate to see it supported. I don't see any reason
> >not to allow it as long as no existing columns are removed or have their
> >type changed.
>
> Well, some other view could do "select * from <firstview>", or some
> client code could assume a certain number of rows, and missbehave
> if there are more rows...

Other views wouldn't see the newly added column, a 'select * from' is
automatically rewritten as 'select column1, column2, ... from' when
creating views.
As for misbehaving client code: That's the client's problem, not the
database's. From a client's point of view there's no difference between
adding a new field to a table (which is allowed) and adding a new field
to a view (which isn't).

> If I need to change the order or number of columns in a view,
> I use pgadmin to find the dependent objects, copy their
> definitions into a sql-window (including the "drop ... " line),
> put my new definition and a "drop cascade " in front, and execute
> all that inside a transaction. But you're right, if more then
> 5 or so other objects depend on a view, this gets pretty annyoing..

Well, in my case the situation is further complicated by the fact that
adding a column to the view should be done automatically from a trigger
function. I wanted some kind of matrix view that had a column for every
row in a certain table. And whenever a new line was inserted into that
table the view should automatically be extended by one column.
Well, fortunately adding a new entry to that table happens only very
rarely, and I wouldn't mind extending the view manually. I'd just prefer
to be able to do so without dropping and recreating everything that
depends on it.

Cheers,
Ingo