Re: machine-readable explain output v4

Robert Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Andrew Dunstan<andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
>
>> Good. I had a look at this for a little while yesterday. I built it, did an
>> install, loaded auto_explain and then ran the regression tests. I didn't
>> like the output much. It looks like the XML has been dumbed down to fit a
>> data model that works for JSON as well, particularly in the lack of use of
>> attributes. An XML processor won't care that much, but humans will certainly
>> find it more tiresome to read. In effect we are swapping horizontal
>> expansion for vertical expansion. It would be nicer to be able to fit a plan
>> into a screen.
>>
>
> Isn't that what text format is for?
>
> Not that the XML format is perfect; I haven't heard one person say
> that they like anything about it except that it is already
> implemented.
>
>
>

Well, I don't think that the fact that we are producing machine-readable
output means we can just ignore the human side of it. It is more than
likely that such output will be read by both machines and humans.
Obviously, we need to make sure that it meets machine processing needs
first, but once we have done that we should not ignore the human
requirements.

BTW, I think it's great that we have machine-readable formats. This
opens the door to a lot of tools. Well done.

No doubt there will be disagreements about the formats. Our community
certainly has a tendency to argue over matters of appearance, sometimes
to the point of silliness. My understanding was that the idea of getting
this in now was to let people have a look, and play to some extent.

cheers

andrew