How to get query plan information from Postgres into JDBC
Sure, just run it as a regular statement:
Statement stmt = connection.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("explain analyze select * from foo");
while (rs.next())
{
System.out.println(rs.getString(1));
}
In addition to the answer supplied above, I would suggest that you make use of the ability to format EXPLAIN plans as XML in PostgreSQL 9.0 and later.
EXPLAIN ( analyze on, format xml ) SELECT ...
This will give you explain output you can more easily work with in Java by manipulating it as XML.