Re: EXPLAIN omits schema?

Dave Page <dpage@postgresql.org> writes:
> Looking to fix this, a comment in src/backend/commands/explain.c
> indicates that this is intentional:

Quite.

> Anyone know why?

As already noted, it'd usually be clutter in lines that are too long
already.  Also, conditionally adding a schema name isn't very good
because it makes life even more complicated for programs that are
parsing EXPLAIN output (yes, there are some).

I agree with the idea of having an option to get EXPLAIN's output in
an entirely different, more machine-readable format.  Not wedded to
XML, but I fear that a pure relational structure might be too strict ---
there's a lot of variability in the entries already.  XML also could
deal naturally with nesting, whereas we'd have to jump through hoops
to represent the plan tree structure in relational form.
        regards, tom lane