Comment by oconnor663
7 years ago
Fair, though maybe I could describe the same problem from the other end. If I'm a DBA and I want to change the way indexing is done, I might need to audit every query in my company to figure out which ones depend on the old index. One way or another, it seems like knowledge about a query's intent to use an index could've been captured explicitly, in a way that's automatically enforced in the future against any number of accidental breaks. But instead all that knowledge is implicit.
Integrating EXPLAINs in your build/deploy process should, in principle, make it possible for anyone to address any concern in such realms.
The DBA you were mentioning here, e.g., could first do a query in the EXPLAIN results, and he'll have his "company-wide queries audit" in a matter of seconds.