Andreas Pflug <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>> Does anyone know of client code that actually pays attention to >>> pg_attribute rows with negative attnums?
> Would those columns remain selectable for debugging/maintenance > purposes, despite not appearing in system catalogs? Certainly. They just wouldn't have entries in pg_attribute. It occurs to me that without the explicit entries, we could stop considering the system names to be reserved column names --- that is, we could allow users to create ordinary columns by these names. (The procedure for looking up a column name would be to first try in pg_attribute, and if that failed to check an internal list of system column names.) If you did make such a column, then you'd be unable to get at the system column you'd masked in that particular table. I'm unsure offhand if this would be a good thing or bad. Not having reserved column names is certainly good, but masking a system column is something you might regret when you need to debug. I suppose you could always rename the conflicting column if so. Making the system column names un-reserved would be a very good thing from the point of view of being able to add more. I've wished for some time that there were a system column exposing the tuple flags (t_infomask). I've not dared to propose adding it because of the likelihood of breaking people's table definitions, but if the name needn't be reserved then that objection goes away. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend