We had a discussion a few days ago about removing attribute padding from
disk storage structures to fit more information on the disk.

Now, I question whether it is worth the added complexity to do this, but
the idea of having different logical and physical numbering of columns
seems like it may solve several problems:

	o Columns can be reordered to minimize padding
	o We can move variable length columns to the end, improving
	  performance 
	o We can fix inheritance problems in ADD COLUMN
	o We can implement fast DROP COLUMN by renumbering the column
	  out of visibility

Comments?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
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Mon, 18 Feb 2002 11:07:47 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Logical vs. Physical attribute numbering