Re: Get rid of system attributes in pg_attribute?

On Sunday 20 February 2005 12:30, Tom Lane wrote:
> Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> > One of us is not understanding the other :-)  I'm asking if I have a
> > piece of code that does something like select attname from pg_attribute
> > where attrelid = 'stock'::regclass::oid with the intent of displaying all
> > those attnames, then the "system atts" will no longer show up in that
> > list, correct?
>
> Correct.  What I'm asking is whether that's a problem for anyone.
>

OK... I can't seem to find my theoretically problem code so I guess it is in 
the clear (the code I can find references the system columns explicitly)  One 
thing I wonder about is will this toss driver implementors a loop? ISTR a 
flag in the ODBC driver whether to include the oid column (or maybe system 
columns)... could be some trouble there.  

One other question, do you see a scheme for selecting system columns even 
explicitly once a user has created their own column with a conflicting name.  
ISTM that we wouldn't be able to select the system ctid once a user creates 
thier own ctid column... somewhere in the back of my head a voice is 
grumbling about sql specs and multiple columns with the same name in a table.  

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL