Hi
> What we have speculated about in the past is extending EXPLAIN
> so that it can be applied to ALTER TABLE and other complicated
> utility commands, and then for ALTER TABLE one bit of info it would
> give you is whether a table rewrite (or even a table scan) is
> required. Obviously, that's a major project, and so nobody's
> tackled it yet AFAIK.
>
I though same idea, using EXPLAIN for this purpose can be nice and intuitive
Regards
Pavel
>
> regards, tom lane
>