Question

There are some attributes that is not fully clear what they do or how they are calculated. Both DBA’s who don’t need to know about application and developers access this. Is there a way to save something like for example in the information_schema that would then be accessible like:

 select information_schema.db_name.table_name.description from tables 

 or could be aliased like:

 select x.description from users

Or other ideas on how to handle?

Answer 1

Use COMMENT table attribute:

1) upon creation:

CREATE TABLE `FormData` (
  `Id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `FormId` varchar(20) collate utf8_czech_ci default NULL,
  `Content` text collate utf8_czech_ci,
) ENGINE=InnoDB COMMENT='Stored data from general form'

2) at any time

alter table `FormData` comment='Any other comments'

Unfortunately the table comment can be only up to 60 characters long.