Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to alter column type problem.

your proposal doesn't seem to work on my database (PG 7.1.2).

For one it doesn't accept the brakets:

ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near "FROM"

When I remove the four brakets, it is telling me:

ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near "col1"

When I remove everything inside the first pair of brakets plus all four brakets, it is telling me:

ERROR:  Cannot cast type 'numeric' to 'varchar'

I think that postgres as mature as it is now should really have a feature to change types of columns etc.