Working on a PostgreSQL database with over a thousand records from late eighteenth-century exhibition catalogues of the Royal Academy, I discover I cannot alter the attributes of a column once it’s already been created.

WTF?

It’s true. You have to backup all the data, recreate the table from scratch with the column attributes you want, and then reload your backup.

At least that’s what you have to do with version 6.5.2 of PostgreSQL. It’s possible later versions allow you to do something simpler.

Just a techno-geek entry, dear reader, to bolster my street-cred with the computing crowd. ;-)

Update: On second thought, maybe the fact that I didn’t already know this does nothing for my credibility. Hmm.