Yes this is one reasonable option, as is the idea of using XML or a
table and making it the client's problem. Neither are going to happen
for this release I think.
And in any case it will always be useful to have an option to print
all the available information anyways so we make as well do that with
"verbose".
--
Greg
On 9 Dec 2008, at 16:35, "Robert Haas" <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>> As stuff matures and becomes indispensable we could consider moving
>> it to the
>> regular EXPLAIN or implement some way to specify precisely which
>> data the user
>> wants. Or just say XML/table data/whatever will solve the problem
>> for us.
>
> I think some way to specify precisely which data the user wants is the
> way to go. The amount of data that there is to be printed is only
> going to continue to increase. If the only toggle is a boolean flag
> to display ALL or NONE of it, then every time someone proposes a new
> type of output, we're going to argue about whether it's useful enough
> to be worth the display real estate.
>
> I'm not sure what the best way is though. I don't think continuing to
> add keywords between EXPLAIN and the start of the query is very
> scalable. Putting parentheses around the option list seems like it
> might eliminate a lot of grammar headaches:
>
> EXPLAIN (option, option, option...) SELECT ...
>
> ...Robert
