Re: Edge case problem with pg_dump

Philip Warner <pjw(at)rhyme(dot)com(dot)au> writes:
> Not sure if this is the right reference, but about 30-Apr-2001, Alfred
> Perlstein raised the problem of column names in COPY, and you poured water
> on the idea:

So I did, but I've changed my mind --- it would provide a usable solution
to this inheritance problem, which has been with us forever, and would
have other uses too.

> (b) TL: One possibility is to fix ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN to maintain the same
> column ordering in parents and children.

That would be a nice solution but I do not think it'll happen in the
foreseeable future :-(. Certainly we're no closer to making it happen
than we were a year ago.

> In your responses you also raised the problem of COPY having to know about
> default values for columns if we allow subsets of columns when we load
> data; does that mean that COPY does something more fancy than the
> equivalent of an INSERT?

No, but it would have to be equivalent to an INSERT. BTW, the
default-value mechanism is cleaner than it used to be and so this
doesn't seem like as serious an objection anymore. Since COPY already
has to have enough mechanism to evaluate constraint expressions,
evaluating defaults too doesn't seem that horrid.

regards, tom lane