Chapter 20 Stored Programs and Views

A stored routine is either a procedure or a function. Stored routines are created with the CREATE PROCEDURE and CREATE FUNCTION statements (see Section 13.1.15, “CREATE PROCEDURE and CREATE FUNCTION Syntax”). A procedure is invoked using a CALL statement (see Section 13.2.1, “CALL Syntax”), and can only pass back values using output variables. A function can be called from inside a statement just like any other function (that is, by invoking the function's name), and can return a scalar value. The body of a stored routine can use compound statements (see Section 13.6, “MySQL Compound-Statement Syntax”).

Stored routines can be dropped with the DROP PROCEDURE and DROP FUNCTION statements (see Section 13.1.26, “DROP PROCEDURE and DROP FUNCTION Syntax”), and altered with the ALTER PROCEDURE and ALTER FUNCTION statements (see Section 13.1.5, “ALTER PROCEDURE Syntax”).

A stored procedure or function is associated with a particular database. This has several implications:

Stored functions cannot be recursive.

Recursion in stored procedures is permitted but disabled by default. To enable recursion, set the max_sp_recursion_depth server system variable to a value greater than zero. Stored procedure recursion increases the demand on thread stack space. If you increase the value of max_sp_recursion_depth, it may be necessary to increase thread stack size by increasing the value of thread_stack at server startup. See Section 5.1.4, “Server System Variables”, for more information.

MySQL supports a very useful extension that enables the use of regular SELECT statements (that is, without using cursors or local variables) inside a stored procedure. The result set of such a query is simply sent directly to the client. Multiple SELECT statements generate multiple result sets, so the client must use a MySQL client library that supports multiple result sets. This means the client must use a client library from a version of MySQL at least as recent as 4.1. The client should also specify the CLIENT_MULTI_RESULTS option when it connects. For C programs, this can be done with the mysql_real_connect() C API function. See Section 23.8.7.52, “mysql_real_connect()”, and Section 23.8.17, “C API Support for Multiple Statement Execution”.

The MySQL grant system takes stored routines into account as follows:

The server manipulates the mysql.proc table in response to statements that create, alter, or drop stored routines. It is not supported that the server will notice manual manipulation of this table.

Metadata about stored routines can be obtained as follows:

Within the body of a stored routine (procedure or function) or a trigger, the value of LAST_INSERT_ID() changes the same way as for statements executed outside the body of these kinds of objects (see Section 12.14, “Information Functions”). The effect of a stored routine or trigger upon the value of LAST_INSERT_ID() that is seen by following statements depends on the kind of routine:

To create a trigger or drop a trigger, use the CREATE TRIGGER or DROP TRIGGER statement, described in Section 13.1.19, “CREATE TRIGGER Syntax”, and Section 13.1.30, “DROP TRIGGER Syntax”.

Here is a simple example that associates a trigger with a table, to activate for INSERT operations. The trigger acts as an accumulator, summing the values inserted into one of the columns of the table.

mysql> CREATE TABLE account (acct_num INT, amount DECIMAL(10,2));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> CREATE TRIGGER ins_sum BEFORE INSERT ON account
    -> FOR EACH ROW SET @sum = @sum + NEW.amount;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.06 sec)

The CREATE TRIGGER statement creates a trigger named ins_sum that is associated with the account table. It also includes clauses that specify the trigger action time, the triggering event, and what to do when the trigger activates:

To use the trigger, set the accumulator variable to zero, execute an INSERT statement, and then see what value the variable has afterward:

mysql> SET @sum = 0;
mysql> INSERT INTO account VALUES(137,14.98),(141,1937.50),(97,-100.00);
mysql> SELECT @sum AS 'Total amount inserted';
+-----------------------+
| Total amount inserted |
+-----------------------+
| 1852.48               |
+-----------------------+

In this case, the value of @sum after the INSERT statement has executed is 14.98 + 1937.50 - 100, or 1852.48.

To destroy the trigger, use a DROP TRIGGER statement. You must specify the schema name if the trigger is not in the default schema:

mysql> DROP TRIGGER test.ins_sum;

If you drop a table, any triggers for the table are also dropped.

Trigger names exist in the schema namespace, meaning that all triggers must have unique names within a schema. Triggers in different schemas can have the same name.

In addition to the requirement that trigger names be unique for a schema, there are other limitations on the types of triggers you can create. In particular, there cannot be multiple triggers for a given table that have the same trigger event and action time. For example, you cannot have two BEFORE UPDATE triggers for a table. To work around this, you can define a trigger that executes multiple statements by using the BEGIN ... END compound statement construct after FOR EACH ROW. (An example appears later in this section.)

Within the trigger body, the OLD and NEW keywords enable you to access columns in the rows affected by a trigger. OLD and NEW are MySQL extensions to triggers; they are not case sensitive.

In an INSERT trigger, only NEW.col_name can be used; there is no old row. In a DELETE trigger, only OLD.col_name can be used; there is no new row. In an UPDATE trigger, you can use OLD.col_name to refer to the columns of a row before it is updated and NEW.col_name to refer to the columns of the row after it is updated.

A column named with OLD is read only. You can refer to it (if you have the SELECT privilege), but not modify it. You can refer to a column named with NEW if you have the SELECT privilege for it. In a BEFORE trigger, you can also change its value with SET NEW.col_name = value if you have the UPDATE privilege for it. This means you can use a trigger to modify the values to be inserted into a new row or used to update a row. (Such a SET statement has no effect in an AFTER trigger because the row change will have already occurred.)

In a BEFORE trigger, the NEW value for an AUTO_INCREMENT column is 0, not the sequence number that is generated automatically when the new row actually is inserted.

By using the BEGIN ... END construct, you can define a trigger that executes multiple statements. Within the BEGIN block, you also can use other syntax that is permitted within stored routines such as conditionals and loops. However, just as for stored routines, if you use the mysql program to define a trigger that executes multiple statements, it is necessary to redefine the mysql statement delimiter so that you can use the ; statement delimiter within the trigger definition. The following example illustrates these points. It defines an UPDATE trigger that checks the new value to be used for updating each row, and modifies the value to be within the range from 0 to 100. This must be a BEFORE trigger because the value must be checked before it is used to update the row:

mysql> delimiter //
mysql> CREATE TRIGGER upd_check BEFORE UPDATE ON account
    -> FOR EACH ROW
    -> BEGIN
    ->     IF NEW.amount < 0 THEN
    ->         SET NEW.amount = 0;
    ->     ELSEIF NEW.amount > 100 THEN
    ->         SET NEW.amount = 100;
    ->     END IF;
    -> END;//
mysql> delimiter ;

It can be easier to define a stored procedure separately and then invoke it from the trigger using a simple CALL statement. This is also advantageous if you want to execute the same code from within several triggers.

There are limitations on what can appear in statements that a trigger executes when activated:

See also Section C.1, “Restrictions on Stored Programs”.

MySQL handles errors during trigger execution as follows:

In MySQL 5.5, triggers can contain direct references to tables by name, such as the trigger named testref shown in this example:

CREATE TABLE test1(a1 INT);
CREATE TABLE test2(a2 INT);
CREATE TABLE test3(a3 INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY);
CREATE TABLE test4(
  a4 INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  b4 INT DEFAULT 0
);

delimiter |

CREATE TRIGGER testref BEFORE INSERT ON test1
  FOR EACH ROW
  BEGIN
    INSERT INTO test2 SET a2 = NEW.a1;
    DELETE FROM test3 WHERE a3 = NEW.a1;
    UPDATE test4 SET b4 = b4 + 1 WHERE a4 = NEW.a1;
  END;
|

delimiter ;

INSERT INTO test3 (a3) VALUES
  (NULL), (NULL), (NULL), (NULL), (NULL),
  (NULL), (NULL), (NULL), (NULL), (NULL);

INSERT INTO test4 (a4) VALUES
  (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0);

Suppose that you insert the following values into table test1 as shown here:

mysql> INSERT INTO test1 VALUES 
    -> (1), (3), (1), (7), (1), (8), (4), (4);
Query OK, 8 rows affected (0.01 sec)
Records: 8  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

As a result, the four tables contain the following data:

mysql> SELECT * FROM test1;
+------+
| a1   |
+------+
|    1 |
|    3 |
|    1 |
|    7 |
|    1 |
|    8 |
|    4 |
|    4 |
+------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM test2;
+------+
| a2   |
+------+
|    1 |
|    3 |
|    1 |
|    7 |
|    1 |
|    8 |
|    4 |
|    4 |
+------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM test3;
+----+
| a3 |
+----+
|  2 |
|  5 |
|  6 |
|  9 |
| 10 |
+----+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM test4;
+----+------+
| a4 | b4   |
+----+------+
|  1 |    3 |
|  2 |    0 |
|  3 |    1 |
|  4 |    2 |
|  5 |    0 |
|  6 |    0 |
|  7 |    1 |
|  8 |    1 |
|  9 |    0 |
| 10 |    0 |
+----+------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Metadata about triggers can be obtained as follows:

MySQL Events are tasks that run according to a schedule. Therefore, we sometimes refer to them as scheduled events. When you create an event, you are creating a named database object containing one or more SQL statements to be executed at one or more regular intervals, beginning and ending at a specific date and time. Conceptually, this is similar to the idea of the Unix crontab (also known as a “cron job”) or the Windows Task Scheduler.

Scheduled tasks of this type are also sometimes known as “temporal triggers”, implying that these are objects that are triggered by the passage of time. While this is essentially correct, we prefer to use the term events to avoid confusion with triggers of the type discussed in Section 20.3, “Using Triggers”. Events should more specifically not be confused with “temporary triggers”. Whereas a trigger is a database object whose statements are executed in response to a specific type of event that occurs on a given table, a (scheduled) event is an object whose statements are executed in response to the passage of a specified time interval.

While there is no provision in the SQL Standard for event scheduling, there are precedents in other database systems, and you may notice some similarities between these implementations and that found in the MySQL Server.

MySQL Events have the following major features and properties:

Events are executed by a special event scheduler thread; when we refer to the Event Scheduler, we actually refer to this thread. When running, the event scheduler thread and its current state can be seen by users having the PROCESS privilege in the output of SHOW PROCESSLIST, as shown in the discussion that follows.

The global event_scheduler system variable determines whether the Event Scheduler is enabled and running on the server. It has one of these 3 values, which affect event scheduling as described here:

If the Event Scheduler status has not been set to DISABLED, event_scheduler can be toggled between ON and OFF (using SET). It is also possible to use 0 for OFF, and 1 for ON when setting this variable. Thus, any of the following 4 statements can be used in the mysql client to turn on the Event Scheduler:

SET GLOBAL event_scheduler = ON;
SET @@global.event_scheduler = ON;
SET GLOBAL event_scheduler = 1;
SET @@global.event_scheduler = 1;

Similarly, any of these 4 statements can be used to turn off the Event Scheduler:

SET GLOBAL event_scheduler = OFF;
SET @@global.event_scheduler = OFF;
SET GLOBAL event_scheduler = 0;
SET @@global.event_scheduler = 0;

Although ON and OFF have numeric equivalents, the value displayed for event_scheduler by SELECT or SHOW VARIABLES is always one of OFF, ON, or DISABLED. DISABLED has no numeric equivalent. For this reason, ON and OFF are usually preferred over 1 and 0 when setting this variable.

Note that attempting to set event_scheduler without specifying it as a global variable causes an error:

mysql< SET @@event_scheduler = OFF;
ERROR 1229 (HY000): Variable 'event_scheduler' is a GLOBAL
variable and should be set with SET GLOBAL

To disable the event scheduler, use one of the following two methods:

To enable the Event Scheduler, restart the server without the --event-scheduler=DISABLED command-line option, or after removing or commenting out the line containing event-scheduler=DISABLED in the server configuration file, as appropriate. Alternatively, you can use ON (or 1) or OFF (or 0) in place of the DISABLED value when starting the server.

Starting the MySQL server with the --skip-grant-tables option causes event_scheduler to be set to DISABLED, overriding any other value set either on the command line or in the my.cnf or my.ini file (Bug #26807).

For SQL statements used to create, alter, and drop events, see Section 20.4.3, “Event Syntax”.

MySQL provides an EVENTS table in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA database. This table can be queried to obtain information about scheduled events which have been defined on the server. See Section 20.4.4, “Event Metadata”, and Section 21.7, “The INFORMATION_SCHEMA EVENTS Table”, for more information.

For information regarding event scheduling and the MySQL privilege system, see Section 20.4.6, “The Event Scheduler and MySQL Privileges”.

MySQL provides several SQL statements for working with scheduled events:

Metadata about events can be obtained as follows:

Event Scheduler Time Representation

Each session in MySQL has a session time zone (STZ). This is the session time_zone value that is initialized from the server's global time_zone value when the session begins but may be changed during the session.

The session time zone that is current when a CREATE EVENT or ALTER EVENT statement executes is used to interpret times specified in the event definition. This becomes the event time zone (ETZ); that is, the time zone that is used for event scheduling and is in effect within the event as it executes.

For representation of event information in the mysql.event table, the execute_at, starts, and ends times are converted to UTC and stored along with the event time zone. This enables event execution to proceed as defined regardless of any subsequent changes to the server time zone or daylight saving time effects. The last_executed time is also stored in UTC.

If you select information from mysql.event, the times just mentioned are retrieved as UTC values. These times can also be obtained by selecting from the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.EVENTS table or from SHOW EVENTS, but they are reported as ETZ values. Other times available from these sources indicate when an event was created or last altered; these are displayed as STZ values. The following table summarizes representation of event times.

The Event Scheduler writes information about event execution that terminates with an error or warning to the MySQL Server's error log. See Section 20.4.6, “The Event Scheduler and MySQL Privileges” for an example.

Information about the state of the Event Scheduler for debugging and troubleshooting purposes can be obtained by running mysqladmin debug (see Section 4.5.2, “mysqladmin — Client for Administering a MySQL Server”); after running this command, the server's error log contains output relating to the Event Scheduler, similar to what is shown here:

Events status:
LLA = Last Locked At  LUA = Last Unlocked At
WOC = Waiting On Condition  DL = Data Locked

Event scheduler status:
State      : INITIALIZED
Thread id  : 0
LLA        : init_scheduler:313
LUA        : init_scheduler:318
WOC        : NO
Workers    : 0
Executed   : 0
Data locked: NO

Event queue status:
Element count   : 1
Data locked     : NO
Attempting lock : NO
LLA             : init_queue:148
LUA             : init_queue:168
WOC             : NO
Next activation : 0000-00-00 00:00:00

In statements that occur as part of events executed by the Event Scheduler, diagnostics messages (not only errors, but also warnings) are written to the error log, and, on Windows, to the application event log. For frequently executed events, it is possible for this to result in many logged messages. For example, for SELECT ... INTO var_list statements, if the query returns no rows, a warning with error code 1329 occurs (No data), and the variable values remain unchanged. If the query returns multiple rows, error 1172 occurs (Result consisted of more than one row). For either condition, you can avoid having the warnings be logged by declaring a condition handler; see Section 13.6.7.2, “DECLARE ... HANDLER Syntax”. For statements that may retrieve multiple rows, another strategy is to use LIMIT 1 to limit the result set to a single row.

To enable or disable the execution of scheduled events, it is necessary to set the value of the global event_scheduler system variable. This requires the SUPER privilege.

The EVENT privilege governs the creation, modification, and deletion of events. This privilege can be bestowed using GRANT. For example, this GRANT statement confers the EVENT privilege for the schema named myschema on the user jon@ghidora:

GRANT EVENT ON myschema.* TO jon@ghidora;

(We assume that this user account already exists, and that we wish for it to remain unchanged otherwise.)

To grant this same user the EVENT privilege on all schemas, use the following statement:

GRANT EVENT ON *.* TO jon@ghidora;

The EVENT privilege has global or schema-level scope. Therefore, trying to grant it on a single table results in an error as shown:

mysql> GRANT EVENT ON myschema.mytable TO jon@ghidora;
ERROR 1144 (42000): Illegal GRANT/REVOKE command; please
consult the manual to see which privileges can be used

It is important to understand that an event is executed with the privileges of its definer, and that it cannot perform any actions for which its definer does not have the requisite privileges. For example, suppose that jon@ghidora has the EVENT privilege for myschema. Suppose also that this user has the SELECT privilege for myschema, but no other privileges for this schema. It is possible for jon@ghidora to create a new event such as this one:

CREATE EVENT e_store_ts
    ON SCHEDULE
      EVERY 10 SECOND
    DO
      INSERT INTO myschema.mytable VALUES (UNIX_TIMESTAMP());

The user waits for a minute or so, and then performs a SELECT * FROM mytable; query, expecting to see several new rows in the table. Instead, the table is empty. Since the user does not have the INSERT privilege for the table in question, the event has no effect.

If you inspect the MySQL error log (hostname.err), you can see that the event is executing, but the action it is attempting to perform fails, as indicated by RetCode=0:

060209 22:39:44 [Note]     EVEX EXECUTING event newdb.e [EXPR:10]
060209 22:39:44 [Note]     EVEX EXECUTED event newdb.e  [EXPR:10]. RetCode=0
060209 22:39:54 [Note]     EVEX EXECUTING event newdb.e [EXPR:10]
060209 22:39:54 [Note]     EVEX EXECUTED event newdb.e  [EXPR:10]. RetCode=0
060209 22:40:04 [Note]     EVEX EXECUTING event newdb.e [EXPR:10]
060209 22:40:04 [Note]     EVEX EXECUTED event newdb.e  [EXPR:10]. RetCode=0

Since this user very likely does not have access to the error log, it is possible to verify whether the event's action statement is valid by executing it directly:

mysql> INSERT INTO myschema.mytable VALUES (UNIX_TIMESTAMP());
ERROR 1142 (42000): INSERT command denied to user
'jon'@'ghidora' for table 'mytable'

Inspection of the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.EVENTS table shows that e_store_ts exists and is enabled, but its LAST_EXECUTED column is NULL:

mysql> SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.EVENTS
     >     WHERE EVENT_NAME='e_store_ts'
     >     AND EVENT_SCHEMA='myschema'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
   EVENT_CATALOG: NULL
    EVENT_SCHEMA: myschema
      EVENT_NAME: e_store_ts
         DEFINER: jon@ghidora
      EVENT_BODY: SQL
EVENT_DEFINITION: INSERT INTO myschema.mytable VALUES (UNIX_TIMESTAMP())
      EVENT_TYPE: RECURRING
      EXECUTE_AT: NULL
  INTERVAL_VALUE: 5
  INTERVAL_FIELD: SECOND
        SQL_MODE: NULL
          STARTS: 0000-00-00 00:00:00
            ENDS: 0000-00-00 00:00:00
          STATUS: ENABLED
   ON_COMPLETION: NOT PRESERVE
         CREATED: 2006-02-09 22:36:06
    LAST_ALTERED: 2006-02-09 22:36:06
   LAST_EXECUTED: NULL
   EVENT_COMMENT:
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

To rescind the EVENT privilege, use the REVOKE statement. In this example, the EVENT privilege on the schema myschema is removed from the jon@ghidora user account:

REVOKE EVENT ON myschema.* FROM jon@ghidora;

Suppose that the user jon@ghidora has been granted the EVENT and INSERT privileges on the myschema schema. This user then creates the following event:

CREATE EVENT e_insert
    ON SCHEDULE
      EVERY 7 SECOND
    DO
      INSERT INTO myschema.mytable;

After this event has been created, root revokes the EVENT privilege for jon@ghidora. However, e_insert continues to execute, inserting a new row into mytable each seven seconds. The same would be true if root had issued either of these statements:

You can verify that this is true by examining the mysql.event table (discussed later in this section) or the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.EVENTS table (see Section 21.7, “The INFORMATION_SCHEMA EVENTS Table”) before and after issuing a DROP USER or RENAME USER statement.

Event definitions are stored in the mysql.event table. To drop an event created by another user account, the MySQL root user (or another user with the necessary privileges) can delete rows from this table. For example, to remove the event e_insert shown previously, root can use the following statement:

DELETE FROM mysql.event
    WHERE db = 'myschema'
      AND definer = 'jon@ghidora'
      AND name = 'e_insert';

It is very important to match the event name, database schema name, and user account when deleting rows from the mysql.event table. This is because the same user can create different events of the same name in different schemas.

Users' EVENT privileges are stored in the Event_priv columns of the mysql.user and mysql.db tables. In both cases, this column holds one of the values 'Y' or 'N'. 'N' is the default. mysql.user.Event_priv is set to 'Y' for a given user only if that user has the global EVENT privilege (that is, if the privilege was bestowed using GRANT EVENT ON *.*). For a schema-level EVENT privilege, GRANT creates a row in mysql.db and sets that row's Db column to the name of the schema, the User column to the name of the user, and the Event_priv column to 'Y'. There should never be any need to manipulate these tables directly, since the GRANT EVENT and REVOKE EVENT statements perform the required operations on them.

Five status variables provide counts of event-related operations (but not of statements executed by events; see Section C.1, “Restrictions on Stored Programs”). These are:

You can view current values for all of these at one time by running the statement SHOW STATUS LIKE '%event%';.

The CREATE VIEW statement creates a new view (see Section 13.1.20, “CREATE VIEW Syntax”). To alter the definition of a view or drop a view, use ALTER VIEW (see Section 13.1.9, “ALTER VIEW Syntax”), or DROP VIEW (see Section 13.1.31, “DROP VIEW Syntax”).

A view can be created from many kinds of SELECT statements. It can refer to base tables or other views. It can use joins, UNION, and subqueries. The SELECT need not even refer to any tables. The following example defines a view that selects two columns from another table, as well as an expression calculated from those columns:

mysql> CREATE TABLE t (qty INT, price INT);
mysql> INSERT INTO t VALUES(3, 50), (5, 60);
mysql> CREATE VIEW v AS SELECT qty, price, qty*price AS value FROM t;
mysql> SELECT * FROM v;
+------+-------+-------+
| qty  | price | value |
+------+-------+-------+
|    3 |    50 |   150 |
|    5 |    60 |   300 |
+------+-------+-------+
mysql> SELECT * FROM v WHERE qty = 5;
+------+-------+-------+
| qty  | price | value |
+------+-------+-------+
|    5 |    60 |   300 |
+------+-------+-------+

The optional ALGORITHM clause for CREATE VIEW or ALTER VIEW is a MySQL extension to standard SQL. It affects how MySQL processes the view. ALGORITHM takes three values: MERGE, TEMPTABLE, or UNDEFINED.

A reason to specify TEMPTABLE explicitly is that locks can be released on underlying tables after the temporary table has been created and before it is used to finish processing the statement. This might result in quicker lock release than the MERGE algorithm so that other clients that use the view are not blocked as long.

A view algorithm can be UNDEFINED for three reasons:

As mentioned earlier, MERGE is handled by merging corresponding parts of a view definition into the statement that refers to the view. The following examples briefly illustrate how the MERGE algorithm works. The examples assume that there is a view v_merge that has this definition:

CREATE ALGORITHM = MERGE VIEW v_merge (vc1, vc2) AS
SELECT c1, c2 FROM t WHERE c3 > 100;

Example 1: Suppose that we issue this statement:

SELECT * FROM v_merge;

MySQL handles the statement as follows:

The resulting statement to be executed becomes:

SELECT c1, c2 FROM t WHERE c3 > 100;

Example 2: Suppose that we issue this statement:

SELECT * FROM v_merge WHERE vc1 < 100;

This statement is handled similarly to the previous one, except that vc1 < 100 becomes c1 < 100 and the view WHERE clause is added to the statement WHERE clause using an AND connective (and parentheses are added to make sure the parts of the clause are executed with correct precedence). The resulting statement to be executed becomes:

SELECT c1, c2 FROM t WHERE (c3 > 100) AND (c1 < 100);

Effectively, the statement to be executed has a WHERE clause of this form:

WHERE (select WHERE) AND (view WHERE)

If the MERGE algorithm cannot be used, a temporary table must be used instead. MERGE cannot be used if the view contains any of the following constructs:

Some views are updatable and references to them can be used to specify tables to be updated in data change statements. That is, you can use them in statements such as UPDATE, DELETE, or INSERT to update the contents of the underlying table.

For a view to be updatable, there must be a one-to-one relationship between the rows in the view and the rows in the underlying table. There are also certain other constructs that make a view nonupdatable. To be more specific, a view is not updatable if it contains any of the following:

It is sometimes possible for a multiple-table view to be updatable, assuming that it can be processed with the MERGE algorithm. For this to work, the view must use an inner join (not an outer join or a UNION). Also, only a single table in the view definition can be updated, so the SET clause must name only columns from one of the tables in the view. Views that use UNION ALL are not permitted even though they might be theoretically updatable.

With respect to insertability (being updatable with INSERT statements), an updatable view is insertable if it also satisfies these additional requirements for the view columns:

MySQL sets a flag, called the view updatability flag, at CREATE VIEW time. The flag is set to YES (true) if UPDATE and DELETE (and similar operations) are legal for the view. Otherwise, the flag is set to NO (false). The IS_UPDATABLE column in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS table displays the status of this flag. It means that the server always knows whether a view is updatable.

If a view is not updatable, statements such UPDATE, DELETE, and INSERT are illegal and are rejected. (Note that even if a view is updatable, it might not be possible to insert into it, as described elsewhere in this section.)

The updatability of views may be affected by the value of the updatable_views_with_limit system variable. See Section 5.1.4, “Server System Variables”.

Earlier discussion in this section pointed out that a view is not insertable if not all columns are simple column references (for example, if it contains columns that are expressions or composite expressions). Although such a view is not insertable, it can be updatable if you update only columns that are not expressions. Consider this view:

CREATE VIEW v AS SELECT col1, 1 AS col2 FROM t;

This view is not insertable because col2 is an expression. But it is updatable if the update does not try to update col2. This update is permissible:

UPDATE v SET col1 = 0;

This update is not permissible because it attempts to update an expression column:

UPDATE v SET col2 = 0;

For a multiple-table updatable view, INSERT can work if it inserts into a single table. DELETE is not supported.

INSERT DELAYED is not supported for views.

If a table contains an AUTO_INCREMENT column, inserting into an insertable view on the table that does not include the AUTO_INCREMENT column does not change the value of LAST_INSERT_ID(), because the side effects of inserting default values into columns not part of the view should not be visible.

The WITH CHECK OPTION clause can be given for an updatable view to prevent inserts to rows for which the WHERE clause in the select_statement is not true. It aslo prevents updates to rows for which the WHERE clause is true but the update would cause it to be not true (in other words, it prevents visible rows from being updated to nonvisible rows).

In a WITH CHECK OPTION clause for an updatable view, the LOCAL and CASCADED keywords determine the scope of check testing when the view is defined in terms of another view. When neither keyword is given, the default is CASCADED. The LOCAL keyword restricts the CHECK OPTION only to the view being defined. CASCADED causes the checks for underlying views to be evaluated as well.

Consider the definitions for the following table and set of views:

CREATE TABLE t1 (a INT);
CREATE VIEW v1 AS SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE a < 2
WITH CHECK OPTION;
CREATE VIEW v2 AS SELECT * FROM v1 WHERE a > 0
WITH LOCAL CHECK OPTION;
CREATE VIEW v3 AS SELECT * FROM v1 WHERE a > 0
WITH CASCADED CHECK OPTION;

Here the v2 and v3 views are defined in terms of another view, v1. v2 has a LOCAL check option, so inserts are tested only against the v2 check. v3 has a CASCADED check option, so inserts are tested not only against its own check, but against those of underlying views. The following statements illustrate these differences:

mysql> INSERT INTO v2 VALUES (2);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO v3 VALUES (2);
ERROR 1369 (HY000): CHECK OPTION failed 'test.v3'

Metadata about views can be obtained as follows: