Currently "ALTER TABLE ... RENAME TO ..." results in all views that refer to the table to be rewritten with the new table name. This is a good thing in the general case, but there are also situations where it is not (e.g. temporarily renaming tables for data reorg reasons). I can't seem to find a clean way to only rename the table without causing change to the view. The ONLY keyword does not work in this case. Anything I am missing (short of re-creating all views). I am on 8.1. test=> create table a (col int); CREATE TABLE test=> create view v_a as select col from a; CREATE VIEW test=> \d v_a View "public.v_a" Column | Type | Modifiers --------+---------+----------- col | integer | View definition: SELECT a.col FROM a; test=> alter table a rename to b; ALTER TABLE test=> \d v_a View "public.v_a" Column | Type | Modifiers --------+---------+----------- col | integer | View definition: SELECT a.col FROM b a;