On Monday 25 May 2009 18:02:53 Tom Lane wrote: > Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes: > > This is all much more complicated than what I proposed, and I fail to > > see what it buys us. I'd say that you're just reinforcing the point I > > made upthread, which is that insisting that XML is the only way to get > > more detailed information will just create a cottage industry of > > beating that XML output format into submission. > > The impression I have is that (to misquote Churchill) XML is the worst > option available, except for all the others. We need something that can > represent a fairly complex data structure, easily supports addition or > removal of particular fields in the structure (including fields not > foreseen in the original design), is not hard for programs to parse, > and is widely supported --- ie, "not hard" includes "you don't have to > write your own parser, in most languages". How many realistic > alternatives are there?
I think we are going in the wrong direction. No one has said that they want a machine-readable EXPLAIN format. OK, there are historically about three people that want one, but they have already solved the problem of parsing the current format. And without having writtens such a parser myself I think that the current format is not inherently hard to parse. What people really want is optional additional information in the human- readable format. Giving them a machine readable format does not solve the problem. Giving them a machine readable format with all-or-none of the optional information and saying "figure it out yourself" does not solve anything either. The same people who currently complain will continue to complain. -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
