[lug] Postgres Alter table

[John Starkey]

> I don't believe you can alter or delete a field in a PostgreSQL table.
> 
> You'll need to do this:
> 
> alter table TABLENAME rename OLDCOLUMN to tempcolumn;
> alter table TABLENAME add column OLDCOLUMN float4;
> update TABLENAME set OLDCOLUMN=column;
> 
> That should work.
> 
> 
> The other option is to dump the table to a text file, delete the table, edit that file to change the field's type, then reload the table.
> 
> Do either of those work for you?

Thanks Calvin, Ryan, and Ralf. I ended up dumping and reloading. But I had a problem with pg_dumpall, so I took this time to upgrade and initdb for the new DB format. Then I just edited the column type in the dump file.

I've been a little spoiled by MySQL I guess :}

Thanks again.

John