>So how is this useful for anything beyond a toy database?
>
>This inability to drop a column makes it hard to follow an "extreme
>programming" style of development, where one designs only as much into
>the database schema as is needed at the moment (DTSTTCPW, YAGNI).
>When I do that I often find that I need to drop columns (in favor of
>other columns of different types) as I evolve the schema to support
>ever more complex applications. PostgreSQL makes this a bit harder
>than it needs to be.
I would content that any moderately complex database design that starts at
the keyboard instead of a pad of paper (i.e., DESIGNED) is going to have
more problems than a "toy" database. Postgres is used in many "real"
applications but more than likely they were thought out and designed before
committing to tables.
len morgan