[sgarland]

Not shown: stop using SELECT *. You almost certainly do not need the entire width of the table, and by doing so, you add more data to filter and transmit, and also prevent semijoins, which are awesome.

[yen223]

There are broadly two kinds of people who write SQL: analysts, and developers

For developers, yeah. SELECT * has pitfalls, and you should almost always specify your columns or use a query builder that does that for you.

For analysts though, life is short and sometimes you really don't want to type all the columns out. SELECT * is fine.

[higeorge13]

Analysts usually query data warehouses, which are columnar, so * is a query/warehouse killer. Everybody should just select the columns they need.

[mr_toad]

This is another area where I wish SQL was more composable. I’d love to be able to specify a bunch of columns using a single reference or a function, without having to resort to dynamic sql. Exclude and rename are a start, but not enough.

[sgarland]

So make a VIEW, then SELECT * from that. Non-materialized views are effectively free as far as the DB is concerned; make hundreds of them if you want.