> The typical way to do schema migration is to compose a list of ALTER TABLE statements. This becomes hard to track the latest schema state as the migration accumulates. It's more intuitive for the developers to specify the desired state. Ideally, PostgreSQL could allow developers to specify the desired CREATE TABLE schema, the engine then reconcile it with the latest schema, figure out the diff, and plan the migration path internally.
This is a terrible idea. The behaviour of engines that do this is unpredictable and suddenly you lose data because the engine deleted a column.
This is a terrible idea. The behaviour of engines that do this is unpredictable and suddenly you lose data because the engine deleted a column.