Message-ID: <d3bd1525612fe9784b66d313755947a9284e4ef9.camel@cybertec.at>
Subject: Re: Reordering the fields in a table
From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
To: "Campbell, Lance" <lance@illinois.edu>,
	"pgsql-admin@lists.postgresql.org"
	 <pgsql-admin@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2021 21:54:24 +0200
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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.
>  
> Why is this a big deal?
> The one issue that causes me the most grief is the readability of tables.  When you manage 17 services
>  where you are continually tweaking the system you find the tables are very unreadable.
> New fields are continually added to the bottom of tables. They are just not readable.

There is a misconception here.
Database tables are not designed for human consumption.
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.

If you want to do it in the database, use a view.
Simple views that just reorder the columns are updatable, so you could just
use those instead of the underlying tables in your statements.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe
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