In a lot of other databases DDL is not transactional and truncate is DDL — most likely confusing it with another RDBMS systems. DDL is transactional in PostgreSQL thus you can even rollback table changes, etc. which is not possible in other RDBMS systems. prod=# create table demo (a int); CREATE TABLE prod=# prod=# \d+ demo; Table "dev.demo" Column | Type | Collation | Nullable | Default | Storage | Compression | Stats target | Description --------+---------+-----------+----------+---------+---------+-------------+--------------+------------- a | integer | | | | plain | | | Access method: heap prod=# begin; BEGIN prod=*# alter table demo add column b int; ALTER TABLE prod=*# \d+ demo; Table "dev.demo" Column | Type | Collation | Nullable | Default | Storage | Compression | Stats target | Description --------+---------+-----------+----------+---------+---------+-------------+--------------+------------- a | integer | | | | plain | | | b | integer | | | | plain | | | Access method: heap prod=*# rollback; ROLLBACK prod=# \d+ demo; Table "dev.demo" Column | Type | Collation | Nullable | Default | Storage | Compression | Stats target | Description --------+---------+-----------+----------+---------+---------+-------------+--------------+------------- a | integer | | | | plain | | | Access method: heap |
