I just pushed change to explain.depesz.com that allows for processing and displaying hints for plans.
For example, take a look at this plan, and check if you'll notice subtle “HINTS" tab.
In there you will see example hints – one about sort and memory, and the other about missing index.
It is not much, but it's a step in (hopefully) right direction, when the explain tool will also provide, automatically, some ideas on what to do to make the thing faster.
Hope you'll find it useful.
This “Hints” is super helpful but I tried several different queries and explain plans on the page and none of them gave “hints”. Is there something that has to be done to enable the hints?
@Joshua:
No. Currently there are only two types of hints displayed:
1. when there is disk based sorting
2. where there is seq scan with simple condition on single column, and it is possible that it would be sped up by index.
So, very, very limited number of hints.
I plan on expanding it, in the future, but for now, it is what it is.
Thank you for indicating the scope of the hints!