surfaces/adapter: in-place schema changes (ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW)

[morsapaes]

Overview

Allow changing the definition of a materialized view in-place using ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW.

Details

Pairing this with #15897 allows users to handle (compatible) schema changes end-to-end without disrupting downstream dependencies.

See also

• storage/sources: in-place schema changes #15897
• storage/sinks: in-place schema changes (ALTER SINK) #26350

cc @benesch

Decision log

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[morsapaes]

Recording a Slack discussion where we concluded that CREATE OR REPLACE MATERIALIZED VIEW might be the more appropriate command here. We already support the OR REPLACE syntax for materialized views:

If a materialized view exists with the same name, replace it with the view defined in this statement. You cannot replace views that other views or sinks depend on, nor can you replace a non-view object with a view.

, so we could extend the semantics to allow replacing the definition of the view also when it has downstream dependencies.

cc @benesch