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EXPLAIN

A utility command for showing the execution plan of a statement

EXPLAIN is a utility command for showing the execution plan of a statement.

EXPLAIN has always been present in PostgreSQL.

Change history

PostgreSQL 14
- EXPLAIN VERBOSE will now display the query identifier, if compute_query_id is not disabled (commit 4f0b0966)
PostgreSQL 13
- WAL option added (commit 33e05f89)
PostgreSQL 12
- SETTINGS option added (commit ea569d64)
PostgreSQL 11
- parallel workers' sort activity displayed in output (commit bf11e7ee)
PostgreSQL 10
- SUMMARY option added (commit f9b1a0dd)
PostgreSQL 9.4
- EXPLAIN ANALYZE now shows planning time (commit 9347baa5)
- EXPLAIN ANALYZE now shows exact and lossy block counts in bitmap heap scans (commit 2bb1f14b)
- total runtime label renamed to execution time (commit 5f86cbd7)
- now shows the grouping columns in Agg and Group nodes (commit f2609905)
PostgreSQL 9.2
- TIMING option added (commit af7914c6)
PostgreSQL 9.0
- EXPLAIN (option [, ...]) syntax added (commit d4382c4a)
- BUFFERS option added (commit cddca5ec)
- COSTS option added (commit d4382c4a)
- FORMAT option added with following output formats:
  - TEXT (default)
  - JSON (commit 9bd27b7c)
  - YAML (commit 324385d6)
  - XML (commit 9bd27b7c)
PostgreSQL 8.4
- VERBOSE option now prints the target list of each plan node, rather than dumping the internal representation (commit 87a2f050)
PostgreSQL 7.2
- ANALYZE option added (commit 89fa5518)

References

PostgreSQL documentation: EXPLAIN
PostgreSQL documentation: Using EXPLAIN

Useful links

explain.depesz.com - an online tool for visualizing EXPLAIN output
PostgreSQL Explain - a useful glossary from the pgMustard project

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