Alvaro Herrera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Tom Lane wrote: >> The only thing we'd lose is that dropping a column >> originally declared as serial wouldn't implicitly drop the sequence.
> Wasn't that the primary purpose that the main coder for dependencies did > the work for? My recollection is that the dependency for serials was added as an afterthought without too much consideration of the long-term implications. It was a cheap way of sort-of solving an immediate problem using a mechanism that we were putting in place anyway. But what we've got now is a misbegotten cross between the theory that a SERIAL is a unitary object you mustn't muck with the innards of, and the theory that SERIAL is just a macro that sets up an initial state you can ALTER to your heart's content later. IMHO we should make a choice between those plans and stick to it, not add more and more infrastructure to let you ALTER things you shouldn't be altering. Either a SERIAL is a black box or it isn't. If it is not to be a black box, we need to reduce rather than increase the amount of hidden semantics. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster