Re: [GENERAL] delete columm help

Joao Paulo Felix <felix(at)cyclades(dot)com> writes:

> 1) Good books/reference on PostgreSQL for a novice?

I've no particular SQL book to recommend, although I hear much good
about Joe Celco's "SQL for Smarties". For a very good online
tutorial, check out <http://w3.one.net/~jhoffman/sqltut.htm>.

> 2) How do I delete a columm from a table, I have tried to use the
> following:
>
> DELETE FROM table_name columm_name

That should be

alter table table_name drop column column_name;

However, it's not yet implemented. You might rename the table, create
a new one lacking the offending column, and copy the data over. On
the other hand, you might just not worry about it. That's one of the
great things about SQL: if you can take the space consumption hit, an
extraneous column doesn't matter. Just don't "select *", which you
normally shouldn't do anyway.

-tih
--
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