Re: feature request: explain "with details" option

On 9/8/16 11:35 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> This isn't simple because there are often *lots* of variants. You
>> > don't just want to see the "top 10" candidate plans, because they're
>> > probably a bunch of small variants on the same plan; the ones you'll
>> > be interested in will probably be very different plans with very bad
>> > relative estimates.
> The other big problem here is that the planner tries *very* hard to reject
> losing paths early; so it does not even form an explainable plan for a
> large fraction of the search space.  (And if it did, you'd be dead before
> you got your EXPLAIN result back.)

What I've wished for is the ability to see plans that were close in cost 
to the best case scenario, since that indicates that a slight change in 
statistics would push the planner in another direction (sometimes with 
disastrous results). Maybe allowing some number of plans to bubble up if 
they were within X percent of the winner wouldn't be that horrible.
-- 
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
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