Re: ALTER TABLE ... TO ... to change related names

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> There is no guarantee that a given sequence is used only for one column 
> in one table, as I understand it. So renaming it could screw you up badly.

Yeah, I would recommend having a discussion about the details of the
proposed behavior before you start coding, not after.

It'd probably be reasonable to rename only those sequences that are
connected to the target table/column by internal dependencies --- this
indicates that they were created by a SERIAL column definition and not
by manual operations.  IIRC, pg_dump already uses this same cue to
decide whether to dump the sequence definition separately or say SERIAL.

It'd still be possible for someone's schema to break, if they made a
sequence via SERIAL and then referred to it by name in defaults for
other columns.  But I think we could say they were being unreasonably
intimate with implementation details in that case.

Similar rules need to be agreed to about when to rename indexes.
        regards, tom lane