Working with metadata
Sometimes, we may want to check the structure of an existing table. For a user, the quickest way is often the SHOW CREATE TABLE statement. This command returns the CREATE TABLE statement that can be used to recreate an identical table. For example:
MariaDB [test]> SHOW CREATE TABLE example \G *************************** 1. row *************************** Table: example Create Table: CREATE TABLE `example` ( `column1` char(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '' COMMENT 'This is a column comment', KEY `idx1` (`column1`) COMMENT 'An index comment' ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COMMENT='This table is just an example' 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
However, parsing a CREATE TABLE statement is a hard task for programs. For this reason, the following two commands return a table's metadata as a relational table:
SHOW COLUMNS FROM <table_name>(orDESC <table_name>) provides information about the columnsSHOW KEYS FROM <table_name>provides information about...