Re: ALTER INDEX .. RENAME allows to rename tables/views as well

"Bossart, Nathan" <bossartn(at)amazon(dot)com> writes:
> On 10/6/21, 1:52 PM, "Bruce Momjian" <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
>> I can confirm this bug in git head, and I think it should be fixed.

> Here's a patch that ERRORs if the object type and statement type do
> not match. Interestingly, some of the regression tests were relying
> on this behavior.

... as, no doubt, are a lot of applications that this will gratuitously
break. We've long had a policy that ALTER TABLE will work on relations
that aren't tables, so long as the requested operation is sensible.

The situation for "ALTER some-other-relation-kind" is a bit more
confused, because some cases throw errors and some don't; but I really
doubt that tightening things up here will earn you anything but
brickbats. I *definitely* don't agree with discarding the policy
about ALTER TABLE, especially if it's only done for RENAME.

In short: no, I do not agree that this is a bug to be fixed. Perhaps
we should have done things differently years ago, but it's too late to
redefine it.

regards, tom lane