If there was enuff interest (I'm not siding one way or the other) you could add in a global setting to change the default. I was also curious as to why these msgs are cross posted in 3 different groups... -----Original Message----- From: Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Chris Bitmead <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 10:14 AM Subject: [GENERAL] Re: [HACKERS] inheritance >Chris Bitmead <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> To me this is a much better idea. In any proper OO application you would >> be using the "*" in postgres 99% of the time - that being the whole >> point of OO. Does any consideration want to be given to making the same >> change while there's not too many people using the inheritance feature? > >What makes you think there's "not too many people" using inheritance? >Furthermore, if we did that it would break the code of people who >*didn't* think they were using inheritance, except as a means of >copying table definitions (which I do a lot, btw). > >I don't think we can reverse the default on that at this late date. > >> The other thing Informix does is automatically propagate all attributes >> including indexes, constraints, pretty much everything to sub-classes. >> Again.. I think this is the right thing. Any thoughts? > >I'd be inclined to agree on that, or at least say that we ought to >provide a simple way of making it happen. But the right semantics >are not always obvious. For example, if the ancestor has a SERIAL >column, do the derived tables get their own sequence objects or >share the ancestor's? Does your answer change if the serial column >was created "by hand" with a "DEFAULT nextval('some_sequence')" clause? >I suspect that any way we jump on this sort of question will be wrong >for some apps, so it should be possible to suppress system copying of >attributes... > > regards, tom lane >