Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> I can't think of a good reason, but making it a select output makes
> EXPLAIN one of the few things you can't get into the server logs, even
> if you want to. At DEBUG5, you get almost everything about a query.
... including the query plan dump, no? I don't see the point here.
One reason in favor of SELECT-like output is that a lot of user
interfaces are not prepared for large NOTICE outputs. (Even psql
isn't really, since it can't paginate NOTICE output.)
regards, tom lane