</para>
<para>
- Generally, the <command>EXPLAIN</command> output will display details for
- every plan node which was generated by the query planner. However, there
- are cases where the executor is able to determine that certain nodes are
- not required; currently, the only node type to support this is the
- <literal>Append</literal> node. This node type has the ability to discard
- subnodes which it is able to determine won't contain any records required
- by the query. It is possible to determine that nodes have been removed in
- this way by the presence of a "Subplans Removed" property in the
- <command>EXPLAIN</command> output.
+ Normally, <command>EXPLAIN</command> will display every plan node
+ created by the planner. However, there are cases where the executor
+ can determine that certain nodes need not be executed because they
+ cannot produce any rows, based on parameter values that were not
+ available at planning time. (Currently this can only happen for child
+ nodes of an Append node that is scanning a partitioned
+ table.) When this happens, those plan nodes are omitted from
+ the <command>EXPLAIN</command> output and a <literal>Subplans
+ Removed: <replaceable>N</replaceable></literal> annotation appears
+ instead.
</para>
</sect2>