Viewing programs generated by QDB

For every SQL statement, QDB generates a program for the virtual machine. If you precede the SQL statement with the keyword EXPLAIN, the virtual machine doesn't execute the program. Instead, the program instructions are returned like a query result. This feature is useful for debugging and learning how the virtual machine operates, and for profiling an SQL statement. The following example shows the output from the statement EXPLAIN DELETE FROM tbl1 WHERE two<20;:
addr opcode p1 p2 p3
0 Transaction 0 0  
1 VerifyCookie 219 0  
2 ListOpen 0 0  
3 Open 0 3 tbl1
4 Rewind 0 0  
5 Next 0 12  
6 Column 0 1  
7 Integer 20 0  
8 Ge 0 5  
9 Recno 0 0  
10 ListWrite 0 0  
11 Goto 0 5  
12 Close 0 0  
13 ListRewind 0 0  
14 OpenWrite 0 3  
15 ListRead 0 19  
16 MoveTo 0 0  
17 Delete 0 0  
18 Goto 0 15  
19 ListClose 0 0  
20 Commit 0 0  
Note: You can make the program output more readable by first issuing the .explain command to qdb, to enable output mode.
You can trace the execution of the QDB virtual machine by making it write messages to standard output. This is done using the non-standard SQL PRAGMA command. You can turn tracing on with this command:
PRAGMA vdbe_trace=on;

To turn tracing off again, enter a similar statement but with on changed to off.