[GENERAL] ERROR: tables can have at most 1600 columns

[Ron St-Pierre]

I found this error in /var/log/messages yesterday after a cron job 
wouldn't complete:
  STATEMENT:  ALTER TABLE victoria.eodData DROP COLUMN tickDate;
  ERROR:  tables can have at most 1600 columns
  STATEMENT:  ALTER TABLE victoria.eodData ADD COLUMN tickerID INTEGER;
  ERROR:  tables can have at most 1600 columns
  ...etc...

The columns didn't exist at the time I tried to drop them, and \dt 
showed that the table only contained the normal dozen columns. Because I 
use the COPY command I remove columns to match the input from an ftp'ed 
file, add the columns, continue processing, etc. After dropping and then 
re-creating the table the error didn't recur and processing continued. 

My question is this: every night the database is vacuumed-full-analyze: 
wouldn't that prevent this condition from happening? Or is there some 
other regular maintenance I should be running?

I'll be away for the next week but I look forward to reading any insight 
on this when I return.

Thanks
Ron
-- running Postgresql 7.4.2 on debian stable
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