grammar allows ALTER TABLE/INDEX/SEQUENCE/VIEW interchangeably for all
subforms of those commands, and then we sort out what's really legal
at execution time. This allows the ALTER SEQUENCE/VIEW reference pages
to fully document all the ALTER forms available for sequences and views
respectively, and eliminates a longstanding cause of confusion for users.
The net effect is that the following forms are allowed that weren't before:
ALTER SEQUENCE OWNER TO
ALTER VIEW ALTER COLUMN SET/DROP DEFAULT
ALTER VIEW OWNER TO
ALTER VIEW SET SCHEMA
(There's no actual functionality gain here, but formerly you had to say
ALTER TABLE instead.)
Interestingly, the grammar tables actually get smaller, probably because
there are fewer special cases to keep track of.
I did not disallow using ALTER TABLE for these operations. Perhaps we
should, but there's a backwards-compatibility issue if we do; in fact
it would break existing pg_dump scripts. I did however tighten up
ALTER SEQUENCE and ALTER VIEW to reject non-sequences and non-views
in the new cases as well as a couple of cases where they didn't before.
The patch doesn't change pg_dump to use the new syntaxes, either.
ALTER VIEW <replaceable>name</replaceable> RENAME TO <replaceable>newname</replaceable>
ALTER VIEW <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable> ALTER [ COLUMN ] <replaceable class="PARAMETER">column</replaceable> SET DEFAULT <replaceable class="PARAMETER">expression</replaceable>
ALTER VIEW <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable> ALTER [ COLUMN ] <replaceable class="PARAMETER">column</replaceable> DROP DEFAULT
ALTER VIEW <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable> OWNER TO <replaceable class="PARAMETER">new_owner</replaceable>
ALTER VIEW <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable> RENAME TO <replaceable class="parameter">new_name</replaceable>
ALTER VIEW <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable> SET SCHEMA <replaceable class="parameter">new_schema</replaceable>
</synopsis>
</refsynopsisdiv>
@ -28,9 +32,20 @@ ALTER VIEW <replaceable>name</replaceable> RENAME TO <replaceable>newname</repla
<title>Description</title>
<para>
<command>ALTER VIEW</command> changes the definition of a view.
The only currently available functionality is to rename the view.
To execute this command you must be the owner of the view.
<command>ALTER VIEW</command> changes various auxiliary properties
of a view. (If you want to modify the view's defining query,
use <command>CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW</>.)
</para>
<para>
You must own the view to use <command>ALTER VIEW</>.
To change a view's schema, you must also have <literal>CREATE</>
privilege on the new schema.
To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new
owning role, and that role must have <literal>CREATE</literal> privilege on
the view's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner
doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the view.
However, a superuser can alter ownership of any view anyway.)
</para>
</refsect1>
@ -48,10 +63,41 @@ ALTER VIEW <replaceable>name</replaceable> RENAME TO <replaceable>newname</repla
Tom Lane
17 years ago