Florian G. Pflug wrote:
>
> I think you'd want to have a flag per field that tell you if the user
> has overridden the storage pos for that specific field. Otherwise,
> the next time you have to chance to optimize the ordering, you might
> throw away changes that the admin has done on purpose. The same hold
> true for a pg_dump/pg_reload cycle. If none of the fields had their
> storage order changed manually, you'd want to reoder them optimally
> at dump/reload time. If, however, the admin specified an ordering, you'd
> want to preserve that.
>
I don't think users should be monkeying with the storage position at
all. Decisions about that should belong to the engine, not to users.
Providing a user tweakable knob for this strikes me as a large footgun,
as well as requiring all sorts of extra checks along the lines you are
talking of.
cheers
andrew