Skip to content
Ruachost Help Center

The information_schema database in MySQL

The information_schema database is a virtual database in MySQL that stores metadata about your databases and server settings.

About information_schema

Section titled “About information_schema”
  • Provides details about databases, tables, columns, character sets, statistics, and more.
  • You can query its tables to retrieve information.
  • You cannot modify or delete the information_schema database.

Example Use

Section titled “Example Use”

You can run queries to gather metadata, such as:

  • List of tables in a database
  • Column data types
  • Character sets used by databases

For a practical example, see the related articles on querying information_schema.

More Information

Section titled “More Information”

Official MySQL documentation:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/information-schema.html