Demoting the "width" part of EXPLAIN

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Seeing as how width is so unused relative to the other items in the
explain output, how about removing it from the normal explain output
and requiring people to do an explain verbose if they really need to
see it? It would have the virtue of shortening the explain output
quite a bit.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg(at)turnstep(dot)com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200605071158
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

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On Sun, May 07, 2006 at 04:03:45PM -0000, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> Seeing as how width is so unused relative to the other items in the
> explain output, how about removing it from the normal explain output
> and requiring people to do an explain verbose if they really need to
> see it? It would have the virtue of shortening the explain output
> quite a bit.

The problem with that is that it's essentially impossible to obtain
information from explain verbose, and width is sometimes useful. Maybe
change existing EXPLAIN VERBOSE to EXPLAIN DEBUG?
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

"Greg Sabino Mullane" <greg(at)turnstep(dot)com> writes:
> Seeing as how width is so unused relative to the other items in the
> explain output,

Huh? It's a critical part of the cost calculations for some things
(eg, sort and hash operations).

regards, tom lane