* Heikki Linnakangas (heikki@enterprisedb.com) wrote:
> >Something worth doing? Not to replace the current explain output, but as a
> >second option (EXPLAIN XML whatever)?
>
> I agree it would be nice to have machine readable explain output.
Seconded here, I'd much rather see this as a seperate option rather than
cluttering up regular 'explain' output for the humans. I do think we
should provide the schema name when it's not clear from the search_path
tho, since that helps the humans too. :)
> DB2 has the concept of "explain tables". Explain output is written to
> tables, which tools query and pretty print the output. I like that idea
> in principle. PostgreSQL is a relational database, so having the explain
> output in relations make sense. No need for XML or any other extra
> libraries, in either the server or client. Having the data in relational
> format allows you to query them. For example, show me all sequential
> scans, or all nodes where the estimated number of rows is off by a
> certain factor.
I like this approach, the only downside is someone/something needs to manage
those tables, unless you can say where the tables are to put the explain
output into or similar? Also, with tables, if someone really wants XML
the tables can be extracted as XML.
Thanks,
Stephen