* EXCEPT is valuable for VIEWs, e.g. VIEW of JOIN with multiple tables containing the same column. If those tables get new columns added, you want the view to a

* EXCEPT is valuable for VIEWs, e.g. VIEW of JOIN with multiple tables containing the same column. If those tables get new columns added, you want the view to automatically include those new columns. Yes, obviously those new columns can have name conflicts and break the view just the same -- but I'd much rather have compile-time errors than the scaling nightmare of having to remember to explicitly name dozens of columns each time, to make sure the new columns appear in the view. Obviously, ORMs address these sorts of problems at the cost of portability between programming languages and third party tools (that don't use your ORM). Yuck.