On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Erik Jones <ejones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Jan 30, 2009, at 11:37 AM, durumdara wrote: >> - I can add/modify a table, or a field to a table without "full lock" on >> the table (like DBISAM restructure). Like in FireBird, where the "add field" >> change only the table description. I don't know that PG supports this way of >> the DB modifying. > > Nope. PostgreSQL is an all or nothing transactional database. I'd never > heard of DBISAM before you mentioned it and have never used Firebird. After > doing a little reading it turns out that if you plan to use transactions at > all (which is very likely given even just the little you've described about > the applications you're building) then you should realize that altering > tables is not compatible with transactions and doing so will automatically > commit any open transactions on the table. Are talking about pgsql or some other database? Everything in pgsql can be done in a transaction, except create / drop database / tablespace. > Looking into Firebird I couldn't > find how it handles (or doesn't) that at all I but I did see that it will > happily let you add a new not null column with no default to a table by > writing nulls for the new attribute for any existing columns. That already > makes me queasy. That's pretty much what pgsql does. Why does it make you queasy? -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
