pg_attribute

The pg_attribute table stores information about table columns. There will be exactly one pg_attribute row for every column in every table in the database. (There will also be attribute entries for indexes, and all objects that have pg_class entries.) The term attribute is equivalent to column.

column	type	references	description
attrelid	oid	pg_class.oid	The table this column belongs to
attname	name		The column name
atttypid	oid	pg_type.oid	The data type of this column
attstattarget	int4		Controls the level of detail of statistics accumulated for this column by ANALYZE. A zero value indicates that no statistics should be collected. A negative value says to use the system default statistics target. The exact meaning of positive values is data type-dependent. For scalar data types, it is both the target number of "most common values" to collect, and the target number of histogram bins to create.
attlen	int2		A copy of pg_type.typlen of this column's type.
attnum	int2		The number of the column. Ordinary columns are numbered from 1 up. System columns, such as oid, have (arbitrary) negative numbers.
attndims	int4		Number of dimensions, if the column is an array type; otherwise 0. (Presently, the number of dimensions of an array is not enforced, so any nonzero value effectively means it is an array)
attcacheoff	int4		Always -1 in storage, but when loaded into a row descriptor in memory this may be updated to cache the offset of the attribute within the row
atttypmod	int4		Records type-specific data supplied at table creation time (for example, the maximum length of a varchar column). It is passed to type-specific input functions and length coercion functions. The value will generally be -1 for types that do not need it.
attbyval	boolean		A copy of pg_type.typbyval of this column's type
attstorage	char		Normally a copy of pg_type.typstorage of this column's type. For TOAST-able data types, this can be altered after column creation to control storage policy.
attalign	char		A copy of pg_type.typalign of this column's type
attnotnull	boolean		This represents a not-null constraint. It is possible to change this column to activate or deactivate the constraint.
atthasdef	boolean		This column has a default value, in which case there will be a corresponding entry in the pg_attrdef catalog that actually defines the value
attisdropped	boolean		This column has been dropped and is no longer valid. A dropped column is still physically present in the table, but is ignored by the parser and so cannot be accessed via SQL
attislocal	boolean		This column is defined locally in the relation. Note that a column may be locally defined and inherited simultaneously
attinhcount	int4		The number of direct ancestors this column has. A column with a nonzero number of ancestors cannot be dropped nor renamed

Parent topic: System Catalogs Definitions