Message-ID: <519ffa9f26f607e8154b012f0ee323be72512da2.camel@cybertec.at>
Subject: Re: Reordering the fields in a table
From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
To: Ron <ronljohnsonjr@gmail.com>, pgsql-admin@lists.postgresql.org
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2021 22:16:34 +0200
In-Reply-To: <ef3e9b95-719c-c37a-822e-82bf8d5b74af@gmail.com>
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On Fri, 2021-04-16 at 22:33 -0500, Ron wrote:
> On 4/16/21 2:54 PM, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> > On Fri, 2021-04-16 at 16:15 +0000, Campbell, Lance wrote:
> > > I would love to see an enhancement to PostgreSQL where administrators had some way to reorder the fields in their tables.
> > 
> > There is a misconception here.
> > Database tables are not designed for human consumption.
> 
> Rubbish.  Database tables are designed by humans to store data that humans 
> care about.

I think you deliberately misunderstand me.
A database is not a GUI to render data.

> > If you want to present your table data in a readable format, you need a front end application.
> > Arranging table columns is the job of such a tool.
> 
> Adding "ALTER TABLE MOVE COLUMN ... BEFORE/AFTER COLUMN ..." is pretty 
> trivial, requiring "just another table", which stores the physical order of 
> the columns, and also the order in which they are presented to the "user 
> layer".  I know this because such a feature was implemented 15+ years ago in 
> Rdb/VMS.

It is *not* trivial.

If you want a solution and are not just trolling, why don't you use views?

Yours,
Laurenz Albe
-- 
Cybertec | https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com