Before MySQL 4.1, the MySQL structure itself does not support adding comments to a column. Thanks to phpMyAdmin's metadata, we can nevertheless comment columns. Since MySQL 4.1, native column commenting is supported. The good news is that for any MySQL version, column commenting via phpMyAdmin is always accessed via the Structure page by editing each field's structure. In the following example, we need to comment three columns, so we choose them and click the pencil icon:

To obtain the next panel as seen here, we are working in vertical mode by setting $cfg['DefaultPropDisplay'] to'vertical'. We enter the following comments:

Then we click Save.

These comments appear at various places—for example, in the export file (see Chapter 7), on the PDF relational schema (see Chapter 15), and in the Browse mode:

If we do not want the comments to appear in Browse mode, we can set $cfg['ShowBrowseComments'] to...