Re: Explain XML patch v2

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 2. Juli 2008 schrieb Tom Raney:
>
>> This is an update to my EXPLAIN XML patch submitted a few days ago.
>>
>
> Could you explain how you came up with the XML schema design?  I suppose you
> just made something up that went along with the existing XML output.
>
Yes, it is based on the existing output.
> I would like to see more integration with the spirit of the existing XML
> functionality.  For example, instead of things like
>
> "<runtime ms=\"%.3f\" />\n"
>
> we ought to be using XML Schema data types for time intervals and so on.
>
The DTD provides only rudimentary document validation but it has no
support for type checking.   So, it may make sense to move to the more
rigorous XML Schema.  There is a 'duration' data type that could be used
for the instance listed above.  Or, we could define our own.
> We might also want to use an XML namespace.
>
Taking the 'ms' field listed above:
xmlns="http://www.postgresql.org/v8.4/ms" or something like this?
> Table and index names should be escaped using the existing escape mechanism
> for identifiers.  There might also be encoding issues.
>
That's a good point.  Or, wrap them with CDATA.
> It would also be interesting if EXPLAIN could optionally be a function that
> returns a datum of type XML, to allow further processing.
>
> Any thoughts on these issues?
>
I am in the process of writing a parser of this XML output for the Red
Hat Visual Explain tool.  I want to see what surprises come up during
implementation.