On Jan 31, 2009, at 9:36 AM, Scott Marlowe wrote:
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.
I was referring to DBISAM there.
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?
Another poster already beat me to answering this one so I'll not
repeat what they said.
Erik Jones, Database Administrator
Engine Yard
Support, Scalability, Reliability
866.518.9273 x 260
Location: US/Pacific
IRC: mage2k
--
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
