Hello,
While playing with inheritence in Postgres 8.3 I've discovered that
inherited columns behave differently depending on whether they were
merged on not (though it may sound trivial for Postgres gurus).
Prerequisites:
1) In this case table beta contains 'truly' inherited column 'a'
marked as '-- Inherited' by pgAdmin:
create table alpha
(
a integer
);
create table beta
(
) inherits(alpha);
2) In this case table beta contains inherited & MERGED column 'a'
which is also marked as '-- Inherited':
create table alpha
(
a integer
);
create table beta
(
a integer
);
alter table beta inherit alpha;
Merged column behaves differently (compared to 'purely' inherited),
namely when column 'a' is dropped in parent table 'alpha' by issuing
alter table alpha drop column a;
command.
In case 1) this command deletes column from table 'beta' while in case2) the column 'a' in table 'beta' remains
untouched.
Request:
Could you please consider marking 'merged' columns as '-- Merged'
instead of just '-- Inherited' since this would allow for easy
identification of merged columns.
Regards,
Peter