Peter Eisentraut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Tom Lane writes: >> Exactly. I'm considerably more worried about breaking out-of-the-way >> places in the backend than I am about what order someone's admin tool >> presents the columns in.
> Clearly, the effort of adding logical column numbers will consist of > making choices between physical and logical numbers in the backend in some > places. So one option is to replace some uses of attnum by attlognum. > The other optionis to replace *all* uses of attnum by attphysnum and then > replace some uses of attphysnum by attnum. To me, this looks like an > equal "risk" as far as the backend goes. This would be a reasonable assessment if we had our hands on every line of backend code that exists. But you are neglecting the probability of breaking user-written C functions, PL languages outside the main distro, etc. If we were going to go about this in a way that does not localize the changes, I'd be inclined to use "attlognum" and "attphysnum" ... that is, *deliberately* break every use that hasn't been looked at and updated. Even that would not guarantee catching all the trouble spots; for example loop indexes and attnums passed as function parameters might not have names that would be caught by a simplistic search-and-replace update. I'm for localizing the changes. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]