Gregory Stark wrote:
> I'm not sure it's worth throwing out the more user-friendly interface
> we have now but I think it's clear that a table is the obvious
> "machine-readable format" if you're already sitting in an SQL
> database... :)
Then again, a table might not be the optimal format for an inherently
hierarchical structure.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. There are three parts to this:
1. determine what statistics to gather
2. gather those statistics
3. use those statistics
#1 can really be handled manually in the beginning, and you'd still have
an excessively useful system if #2 and #3 are available. Once that is
done, we can gain experience with the system and maybe find a way to
automate #1, but it really does not need to be the first step.
--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
