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The EXPLAIN keyword is really awesome. It also allows you to quickly validate SQLite command text without actually executing it. We have found this to be useful for real-time validation of user inputs when working on SQL-based config tools.

Note that EXPLAIN also seamlessly incorporates any application-defined functions, so you can validate everything is as expected. Useful when being clever with DSLs and such.

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I hope SQLite's EXPLAIN were more visual / tree-like. Using bytecode internally is fine, but what users care is typically more high level. Decoding the that high level intention from the bytecode is so burdensome that I often give up and just fall back to try-n-error.

If you use EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN rather than just EXPLAIN, you get a high level description of the plan rather than the bytecode.

Great to know! Thanks!

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