That's the way it works now. In earlier versions any added columns would still be retrieved, shifting all the other column values to the right.. So all the data would wind up having the wrong column names.

That's also the way it works in PostgreSQL. I think the view is actually compiled into a parse tree with named columns, and the view given a defined type iirc.

(Select * from ... in PostgreSQL is actually really usefun in anything object-relational because you get objects of a named type back btw.)

Indeed I did - thanks. I just remembered it was the version before 2008, as I left the company in the middle of the upgrade to that one.

The columns being renamed on views bit us big time. We had a large ERP package that we'd built numerous custom views on top of. Whenever we applied an update to the ERP package, it'd add columns and all our views would be borked.