Question

I have a table in my Mysql database, which is used for authentication. And now, I need to make the authentication case sensitive.
Googling around, I have realized Mysql columns are case insensitive (contrary to Oracle) for search operations and the default behavior can be changed while creating the table by specifying the “binary” ie.

CREATE TABLE USERS
(
    USER_ID SMALLINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    USER_NAME VARCHAR(50) BINARY NOT NULL
)

Can someone please tell me how to alter the table in Mysql to add the “Binary” to an existing column of a DB?

Thanks!

Answer 1

ALTER TABLE USERS CHANGE USER_NAME USER_NAME VARCHAR(50) BINARY NOT NULL;

For string data types, the BINARY attribute is a nonstandard MySQL extension that is shorthand for specifying the binary collation of the character set.
As of MySQL 8.0.27, this usage is deprecated [1][2]. A character set with _bin collation should be used instead, e.g.

ALTER TABLE users MODIFY user_name VARCHAR(50) COLLATE utf8mb4_bin;