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> (or DESC <table_name>) provides information about the columns

• SHOW KEYS FROM <table_name> provides information about...