Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > > If the client has to bear the some part, isn't the invisible > > column approach much simpler ? > > > > I've put a pretty much time into DROP COLUMN feature but > > I am really disappointed to see the comments in this thread. > > What DROP COLUMN has brought me seems only a waste of time. > > I kind of agree with Hiroshi here. All I want to be able to do is drop > columns from my tables, and reclaim the space. I've got all sorts of > production tables with columns just sitting there doing nothing, awaiting > the time that I can happily drop them. It seems to me that whatever we do > will require some kind of client breakage.
Actually, what we need to do to reclaim space is to enable table recreation without the column, now that we have relfilenode for file renaming. It isn't hard to do, but no one has focused on it. I want to focus on it, but have not had the time, obviously, and would be very excited to assist someone else. Hiroshi's fine idea of marking certain columns as unused would not have reclaimed the missing space, just as my idea of physical/logical column distinction would not reclaim the space either. Again, my physical/logical idea is more for fixing other problems and optimization, not DROP COLUMN. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 853-3000 + If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
