> Why should ALTER COLUMN change the column number, i.e. position?
Because it creates a NEW column.
>> It may be that programmers should not rely on this, but it happens,
>> and in very
>> large projects. If we can avoid unexpected side-affects like moving the
>> columns position, then I think we should.
>>
>>
> This is *expected* if behaviour if you delete and add columns; is there
> any DB system out there that allows to reshuffle the column ordering?
MySQL
Chris