You’re right. When I wrote that, I was thinking higher up the chain in an orm layer. Sending “select *” to the db can’t be “optimized away” at that layer, it w

You’re right. When I wrote that, I was thinking higher up the chain in an orm layer. Sending “select *” to the db can’t be “optimized away” at that layer, it will have to return all the columns. Unless, like you said, the scope of the “select *” contains it in a sub query where the columns used can be known... “it depends :)”