[ARROW-9746] [Rust][DataFusion] Add FORMAT to explain plan and an easy to visualize format

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Invalid
• Component/s: Rust, Rust - DataFusion
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/25798
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Andrew Lamb
• Created: 14/Aug/20 18:33
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 08:08
• Resolved: 26/Apr/21 13:18

Description

As suggested by jorgecarleitao on https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/7959#pullrequestreview-467291192 –

> #### Other formats?
> One thing I dislike about spark is that EXPLAIN is in a not-so-nice format to parse programmatically. One idea is to allow `explain` to return the result in json. This is e.g. useful to construct a visual graph representation of the plan. One idea would be to support another string parameter, `format`, and make it default to `string` (not necessarily in this PR).

The typical thing I have used in the past to great effect is graphviz: https://graphviz.org/ and `dot` – so the idea is that we would get a command like:

EXPLAIN FORMAT GRAPHVIZ SELECT * FROM FOO

which would provide the plan in graphviz format (in addition to text)

Issue Links

• is related to: ARROW-10531 [Rust] [DataFusion] Better display for logical plans: Graphviz and Schema information