and to which the key difference between the 2 is EXPLAIN is described as If you want to see the execution plan but not run the query... whereas PROFILE is described as . This will run your query and ....
And such that EXPLAIN does not run the query, whereas PROFILE does
if i run a query with Merge statement and i add the profile before the merge clause, then will the data be committed on database or it will simply run and take the information out??
it should be committed since PROFILE runs the query. Are you seeing otherwise?