How do the EXPLAIN and EXPLAIN ANALYZE commands differ in SQL and what is their main purpose?

The EXPLAIN command in SQL shows the execution plan of a query, that is, how the DBMS intends to retrieve data (for example, which indexes to use, the order of table joins). This helps understand how efficiently the query is written.

EXPLAIN ANALYZE executes the query and additionally shows the actual time taken for each step and the number of rows processed. This allows comparing the plan with the actual performance.

The main purpose of both commands is query optimization and identifying bottlenecks in database performance.