What is the Difference Between Explain and Describe?

The difference between "explain" and "describe" lies in their purpose and the level of detail they require. Here are the key differences:

• Explain: Focuses on providing clarification, understanding, or reasoning about a subject, concept, or process. When you explain something, you try to make it clearer and easier to understand by providing logical connections and offering a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Explaining typically involves dealing with more abstract and conceptual ideas, theories, processes, or complex systems.
• Describe: Involves providing a detailed account or portrayal of something, often focusing on its appearance, characteristics, or qualities. Describing tries to present an image of the object or person by providing specific details or examples. This is more concerned with concrete objects and their physical attributes, characteristics, or observable features.

In summary, "explain" is about making something easier to understand by providing reasoning and logical connections, while "describe" is about giving a detailed account of something to show what it's like.

Comparative Table: Explain vs Describe

The difference between "explain" and "describe" lies in their focus and usage. Here is a table summarizing their differences:

In the context of MySQL, the DESCRIBE statement is commonly used to obtain information about table structure, while the EXPLAIN statement is used to obtain a query execution plan, which explains how MySQL would execute a query. However, these two keywords are considered synonyms in MySQL and can be used interchangeably.