Posted by Hugo Kornelis on 12/06/05 00:24

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 08:33:02 +0000, Trevor Best wrote:

>Danny wrote:
>> In general its not a security concern unless you are restricting columns
>> through a view. New columns would show up (assuming the view was
>> refreshed). Basically select * should be avoided unless it is the intend to
>> expose all columns no matter what. The bigger concern is when it's embeded
>> in code. The code could break if columns are changed.
>
>If you have "select * from table1" in code and drop column2 how is that
>different from having "select column1, column2, column3 from table1" in
>code and dropping column2? (apart from the error ocurring on a different
>line of code of course:-))

Hi Trevor,

Have you ever had the task to do impact analysis for an impending
change? Life is good if you can search your sources for a column name
and KNOW that you have all occurences.

Also - consider what happens if someone drops and recreates the tables
with the columns in a different order. Best case, you get an error
becuase datatypes don't match anymore. Worst case, you don't....

Best, Hugo
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