Simpler / easier to see expressions in tree explain mode

[alamb]

Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge?

• Part of [EPIC] Complete SQL EXPLAIN Tree Rendering #14914

Thanks to @Standing-Man , tree explains are looking nice

• feat: implement tree explain for ProjectionExec #15082

The current display of expressions makes it possible to understand their inner structure (what is casted, etc)

However, it is quite hard for normal users to read. For example

| physical_plan | ┌───────────────────────────┐                                                                         |
|               | │       ProjectionExec      │                                                                         |
|               | │    --------------------   │                                                                         |
|               | │ foo.int_column + Int64(100│                                                                         |
|               | │             ):            │                                                                         |
|               | │ CAST(int_column@0 AS Int64│                                                                         |
|               | │          ) + 100          │                                                                         |
|               | │                           │                                                                         |
|               | │  substr(foo.string_column │                                                                         |
|               | │    ,Int64(1),Int64(2)):   │                                                                         |
|               | │ substr(string_column@1, 1,│                                                                         |
|               | │             2)            │                                                                         |
|               | └─────────────┬─────────────┘      

For example

> explain select int_column + 100, substr(string_column, 1, 2) from foo where string_column = 'bar';
+---------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| plan_type     | plan                                                                                                  |
+---------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| logical_plan  | Projection: CAST(foo.int_column AS Int64) + Int64(100), substr(foo.string_column, Int64(1), Int64(2)) |
|               |   Filter: foo.string_column = Utf8("bar")                                                             |
|               |     TableScan: foo projection=[int_column, string_column]                                             |
| physical_plan | ┌───────────────────────────┐                                                                         |
|               | │       ProjectionExec      │                                                                         |
|               | │    --------------------   │                                                                         |
|               | │ foo.int_column + Int64(100│                                                                         |
|               | │             ):            │                                                                         |
|               | │ CAST(int_column@0 AS Int64│                                                                         |
|               | │          ) + 100          │                                                                         |
|               | │                           │                                                                         |
|               | │  substr(foo.string_column │                                                                         |
|               | │    ,Int64(1),Int64(2)):   │                                                                         |
|               | │ substr(string_column@1, 1,│                                                                         |
|               | │             2)            │                                                                         |
|               | └─────────────┬─────────────┘                                                                         |
|               | ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐                                                                         |
|               | │      RepartitionExec      │                                                                         |
|               | └─────────────┬─────────────┘                                                                         |
|               | ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐                                                                         |
|               | │    CoalesceBatchesExec    │                                                                         |
|               | └─────────────┬─────────────┘                                                                         |
|               | ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐                                                                         |
|               | │         FilterExec        │                                                                         |
|               | │    --------------------   │                                                                         |
|               | │         predicate:        │                                                                         |
|               | │   string_column@1 = bar   │                                                                         |
|               | └─────────────┬─────────────┘                                                                         |
|               | ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐                                                                         |
|               | │       DataSourceExec      │                                                                         |
|               | │    --------------------   │                                                                         |
|               | │        bytes: 1320        │                                                                         |
|               | │       format: memory      │                                                                         |
|               | │          rows: 1          │                                                                         |
|               | └───────────────────────────┘                                                                         |
|               |                                                                                                       |
+---------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
2 row(s) fetched.
Elapsed 0.012 seconds.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like the expressions to be nicely formatted

For example instead of above it would be great to see

| physical_plan | ┌───────────────────────────┐                                                                         |
|               | │       ProjectionExec      │                                                                         |
|               | │    --------------------   │                                                                         |
|               | │ foo.int_column + 100      │                                                                         |
|               | │                           │                                                                         |
|               | │ substr(string_column, 1, 2)│                                                                         |
|               | └─────────────┬─────────────┘      

Describe alternatives you've considered

PhysicalExpr already has Debug and Display impls with varying levels of detail.

One way to add another way of displaying PhysicalExpr, would be to add a new method to the PhysicalExpr trait for "simplified display"

Maybe something like

    fn simply_fmt(&self, f: &mut Formatter<'_>) -> Result;

We could then make this work with normal write! style macros

Additional context

No response

[alamb]

If anyone is interested in this I think the first thing to do would be to get a function like this working:

fn simple_display(expr: &dyn PhysicalExpr) -> String

Then we can integrate it into the PhysicalExpr trait

[irenjj]

take

[alamb]

I was thinking about this last night -- I was thinking a good name for this function might be "fmt_sql` or something -- with the goal that the expressions would (eventually) be valid SQL expressions

That would be human readable and might have potential value for other usecases