How do I alter the position of a column in a PostgreSQL database table?

Question

I\'ve tried the following, but I was unsuccessful:

ALTER TABLE person ALTER COLUMN dob POSITION 37;

Answer 1

This post is old and probably solved but I had the same issue. I resolved it by creating a view of the original table specifying the new column order.

From here I could either use the view or create a new table from the view.

    CREATE VIEW original_tab_vw AS
    SELECT a.col1, a.col3, a.col4, a.col2
    FROM original_tab a
    WHERE a.col1 IS NOT NULL --or whatever

    SELECT * INTO new_table FROM original_tab_vw

Rename or drop the original table and set the name of the new table to the old table.