Consequences of adding columns to tables ?

Hello,
What do you think can be the consequences of spending your time adding fields to existing tables ?
We have several apps here where developers regularly send requests to modify tables structures, kind of: ALTER TABLE <..> ADD COLUMN X
UPDATE <..> SET x = '<def. value>'
ALTER TABLE <..> MODIFY (x DEFAULT VALUE '<def. val.>')

What are the effects in the blocks ? Do records not end up having chained/migrated rows all over the place ?

What do you think ?
Thanks.
Spendius Received on Tue Aug 30 2005 - 02:36:22 CDT