Re: Some belated patch review for "Buffers" explain analyze patch

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>>> I'd prefer to have the average; it's very confusing to have an explain
>>> row which has the cost per iteration, but the buffer usage per node.
>
>> The cost per iteration thing is IMO one of the most confusing parts of
>> the EXPLAIN output; I'm not really eager to see us replicate that
>> elsewhere.
>
> Well, if you want to put forward a proposal to get rid of that approach
> entirely, go ahead.  But it doesn't seem like a good idea to me for
> EXPLAIN to print some numbers according to one viewpoint and some
> according to the other.

Well, if I propose that we just abandon that approach and print only
totals for everything, is that DOA?  I think it would be a major
improvement, but it will break backward compatibility.

...Robert