Subject: Re: alter table table add column
From: Oliver Elphick <olly@lfix.co.uk>
To: pgsql-novice <pgsql-novice@postgresql.org>
In-Reply-To: <1185855587.28634.6.camel@localhost>
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Organization: LFIX
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 07:25:53 +0100
Message-Id: <1185863153.10580.92.camel@linda.lfix.co.uk>
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On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 12:19 +0800, Ronald Rojas wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Anybody knows how to add column with reference to BEFORE or AFTER any
> given column? Let say here's my table structure:
> 
>   Column  |       Type        | Modifiers 
> ----------+-------------------+-----------
> surname  | character varying | 
> lastname | character varying | 
> address   | character varying |
> 
> And, I want to add the field name age with type integer after lastname
> OR before the address field. How to I do that?
> 
> I would really appreciate your response.

It isn't possible.  Nor is it really necessary, since you can ask for
columns in any order in a SELECT.

If you really want to do it, you need to dump the table to a new table
with the columns in the desired order; delete the old table and rename
the new one.

Alternatively, add the new column (which will come at the end), add a
new address column and set its contents to be the same as the current
address column, finally drop the old address column.  (This will waste
space in the table.)

-- 
Oliver Elphick                                          olly@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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