Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> I think XML explain output is a good idea, but I don't think it's a
> substitute for better options to control the human-readable form.
Yeah. I think a well-designed XML output format for EXPLAIN is a fine
thing to work on, but I don't believe it would make the "create a
planner test suite" problem noticeably easier.
I see the purpose of an XML format as being to allow tools like
Red Hat's old Visual Explain (now maintained by EDB IIRC) to parse
EXPLAIN's output with somewhat better odds of not breaking from
one release to the next.
regards, tom lane