Received: from localhost (postgresql.org [64.49.215.8]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E25E47619E for ; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 05:55:12 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mail1.servata.com (unknown [64.71.190.37]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B21E447627F for ; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 05:53:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [66.75.132.38] (helo=jeff) by mail1.servata.com with asmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 180JBx-0003U4-00; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 03:08:17 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: Jeff Davis To: Gavin Sherry Subject: Re: Changing Column Order (Was Re: MySQL vs PostgreSQL.) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 02:54:20 -0700 User-Agent: KMail/1.4.3 Cc: PostgreSQL-development References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-Id: <200210120254.20255.list-pgsql-hackers@empires.org> X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS new-20020517 X-Archive-Number: 200210/556 X-Sequence-Number: 30325 > > > > Did attlognum's (for changing column order) get implemented for 7.2 ? > > I cannot think of any reason why changing column order should be > implemented in Postgres. Seems like a waste of time/more code bloat for > something which is strictly asthetic. > > Regardless, I do have collegues/clients who ask when such a feature will > be implemented. Why is this useful? > I think even "asthetic" might go too far. It seems mostly irrelevent except for people who are obsessive compulsive and operate in interactive psql a lot. It's marginally simpler to get the columns ordered the way you want so that you can just do "SELECT * ..." rather than "SELECT att0,att1,... ..." at the interactive psql prompt, and still get the columns in your favorite order. As far as I can tell, the order the attributes are returned makes no difference in a client application, unless you're referencing attributes by number. All applications that I've made or seen all use the name instead, and I've never heard otherwise, or heard any advantage to using numbers to reference columns. When someone asks, ask them "why?". I'd be interested to know if they have some other reason. I would think that if they absolutely wanted to fine-tune the order of columns they'd use a view (seems a little easier than continually changing order around by individual SQL statements). Regards, Jeff