View not allowing to drop column (Bug or Feature enhancement )

[Shrikant Bhende <shrikantbhende.net@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

While working on the view I came across an unusual behaviour of the view,

PostgreSQL do not allows to drop a column from the view, whereas same pattern of Create and Replace view works while adding a column.

Please find below test for the same. 

Version info 

===========

 postgres=# select version();
                                                 version                                                  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 9.5.1 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-55), 64-bit
(1 row)

\d+ orgdata
                               Table "public.orgdata"
 Column  |         Type          | Modifiers | Storage  | Stats target | Description 
---------+-----------------------+-----------+----------+--------------+-------------
 id      | integer               | not null  | plain    |              | 
 name    | character varying(20) | not null  | extended |              | 
 address | character varying(20) |           | extended |              | 
 age     | integer               | not null  | plain    |              | 
 salary  | numeric(10,0)         |           | main     |              | 
Indexes:
    "orgdata_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
Triggers:
    example_trigger AFTER INSERT ON orgdata FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE auditlogfunc()

Creating view 

postgres=# create or replace view vi1  as 
select id , name from orgdata ;
CREATE VIEW

Alter command do not have any option to drop column

postgres=# alter view vi1 
ALTER COLUMN  OWNER TO      RENAME TO     SET SCHEMA    

To add columns it will work.

========================

postgres=# create or replace view vi1 as 
postgres-# select id, name, age from orgdata ;
CREATE VIEW

While trying to drop a column by replacing view definition from view it throws an error saying cannot drop column from view.

=====================================================================

postgres=# create or replace view vi1 as select 
id , name from orgdata ;
ERROR:  cannot drop columns from view

If its not a bug and a limitation kindly guide me towards any documentation where it is mentioned.

Thanks.

--

Shrikant Bhende
+91-9975543712