Several system variables exist only as session variables. These cannot be set
at server startup but can be assigned values at runtime using the SET
statement (except for those that are read only).
Most of them are not displayed by SHOW
VARIABLES
, but you can obtain their values using SELECT
. This section describes the session system
variables. For information about setting or displaying their values, see Section 5.1.5, “Using System
Variables”. For example:
The lettercase of these variables does not matter.
autocommit
The autocommit mode. If set to 1, all changes to a table take effect
immediately. If set to 0, you must use COMMIT, and
ROLLBACK Syntax" href="ch12s04.html#commit">COMMIT
to accept a
transaction or COMMIT, and
ROLLBACK Syntax" href="ch12s04.html#commit">ROLLBACK
to cancel it.
By default, client connections begin with autocommit
set
to 1. If you change autocommit
mode from 0 to 1, MySQL performs an
automatic COMMIT, and
ROLLBACK Syntax" href="ch12s04.html#commit">COMMIT
of any open
transaction. Another way to begin a transaction is to use a COMMIT, and
ROLLBACK Syntax" href="ch12s04.html#commit">START TRANSACTION
or
COMMIT, and
ROLLBACK Syntax" href="ch12s04.html#commit">BEGIN
statement. See
COMMIT, and
ROLLBACK Syntax" href="ch12s04.html#commit">Section 12.4.1, “START
TRANSACTION
, COMMIT
, and ROLLBACK
Syntax”.
big_tables
If set to 1, all temporary tables are stored on disk
rather than in memory. This is a little slower, but the error The table tbl_name
is
full
does not occur for SELECT
operations that
require a large temporary table. The default value for a new connection is 0
(use in-memory temporary tables). Normally, you should never need to set this
variable, because in-memory tables are automatically converted to disk-based
tables as required.
NoteThis variable was formerly named sql_big_tables
.
error_count
The number of errors that resulted from the last statement that generated
messages. This variable is read only. See Section 12.5.5.18, “SHOW
ERRORS
Syntax”.
foreign_key_checks
If set to 1 (the default), foreign key constraints for InnoDB
tables are checked. If set to 0, they are ignored.
Disabling foreign key checking can be useful for reloading InnoDB
tables in an order different from that required by
their parent/child relationships. See Section 13.6.4.4, “FOREIGN KEY
Constraints”.
Setting foreign_key_checks
to 0 also affects data definition
statements: DROP SCHEMA
drops
a schema even if it contains tables that have foreign keys that are referred to
by tables outside the schema, and DROP TABLE
drops
tables that have foreign keys that are referred to by other tables.
NoteSetting foreign_key_checks
to 1 does not trigger a scan of the
existing table data. Therefore, rows added to the table while foreign_key_checks = 0
will not be verified for
consistency.
identity
This variable is a synonym for the last_insert_id
variable. It exists for compatibility
with other database systems. You can read its value with SELECT @@identity
, and set it using SET
identity
.
insert_id
The value to be used by the following INSERT
or ALTER TABLE
statement when inserting an AUTO_INCREMENT
value. This is mainly used with the binary
log.
last_insert_id
The value to be returned from LAST_INSERT_ID()
. This is stored in the binary log when
you use LAST_INSERT_ID()
in a statement that updates a table.
Setting this variable does not update the value returned by the mysql_insert_id()
C API function.
profiling
If set to 0 (the default), statement profiling is disabled. If set to 1,
statement profiling is enabled and the SHOW PROFILES
and SHOW PROFILE
statements provide access to profiling
information. See Section 12.5.5.33, “SHOW
PROFILES
Syntax”. This variable was added in MySQL 5.1.24.
profiling_history_size
The number of statements for which to maintain profiling information if profiling
is
enabled. The default value is 15. The maximum value is 100. Setting the value to
0 effectively disables profiling. See Section 12.5.5.33, “SHOW
PROFILES
Syntax”. This variable was added in MySQL 5.1.24.
rand_seed1
The rand_seed1
and rand_seed2
variables exist as session variables only, and can be set but not read.
Beginning with MySQL 5.1.18, the variables — but not their values — are shown in
the output of SHOW
VARIABLES
.
The purpose of these variables is to support replication of the RAND()
function. For statements that invoke RAND()
, the master passes two values to the slave,
where they are used to seed the random number generator. The slave uses these
values to set the session variables rand_seed1
and rand_seed2
so
that RAND()
on the slave generates the same value as on the master.
rand_seed2
See the description for rand_seed1
.
sql_auto_is_null
If set to 1 (the default), you can find the last inserted row for a table
that contains an AUTO_INCREMENT
column by using the
following construct:
WHERE auto_increment_column
IS NULL
This behavior is used by some ODBC programs, such as Access.
sql_big_selects
If set to 0, MySQL aborts SELECT
statements that
are likely to take a very long time to execute (that is, statements for which
the optimizer estimates that the number of examined rows exceeds the value of max_join_size
). This is useful when an inadvisable
WHERE
statement has been issued. The default value
for a new connection is 1, which allows all SELECT
statements.
If you set the max_join_size
system variable to a value other than
DEFAULT
, sql_big_selects
is set to 0.
sql_buffer_result
If set to 1, sql_buffer_result
forces results from SELECT
statements to be put into temporary tables. This
helps MySQL free the table locks early and can be beneficial in cases where it
takes a long time to send results to the client. The default value is 0.
sql_log_bin
If set to 0, no logging is done to the binary log for the client. The client
must have the SUPER
privilege to set this option. The default value
is 1.
sql_log_off
If set to 1, no logging is done to the general query log for this client. The
client must have the SUPER
privilege to set this option. The default value
is 0.
sql_log_update
This variable is deprecated, and is mapped to sql_log_bin
.
sql_notes
If set to 1 (the default), warnings of Note
level
are recorded. If set to 0, Note
warnings are
suppressed. mysqldump includes output to set this variable
to 0 so that reloading the dump file does not produce warnings for events that
do not affect the integrity of the reload operation.
sql_quote_show_create
If set to 1 (the default), the server quotes identifiers for SHOW CREATE
TABLE
and SHOW CREATE
DATABASE
statements. If set to 0, quoting is disabled. This option is
enabled by default so that replication works for identifiers that require
quoting. See Section 12.5.5.12, “SHOW CREATE TABLE
Syntax”, and Section 12.5.5.8, “SHOW CREATE DATABASE
Syntax”.
sql_safe_updates
If set to 1, MySQL aborts UPDATE
or DELETE
statements that do not use a key in the WHERE
clause or a LIMIT
clause.
This makes it possible to catch UPDATE
or DELETE
statements where keys are not used properly and
that would probably change or delete a large number of rows. The default value
is 0.
sql_warnings
This variable controls whether single-row INSERT
statements
produce an information string if warnings occur. The default is 0. Set the value
to 1 to produce an information string.
timestamp = {timestamp_value
| DEFAULT}
Set the time for this client. This is used to get the original timestamp if
you use the binary log to restore rows. timestamp_value
should be a Unix epoch
timestamp, not a MySQL timestamp.
SET timestamp
affects the value returned by NOW()
but not by
SYSDATE()
. This means that timestamp settings in the
binary log have no effect on invocations of SYSDATE()
.
The server can be started with the --sysdate-is-now
option to cause SYSDATE()
to
be an alias for NOW()
, in which case SET
timestamp
affects both functions.
unique_checks
If set to 1 (the default), uniqueness checks for secondary indexes in InnoDB
tables are performed. If set to 0, storage engines
are allowed to assume that duplicate keys are not present in input data. If you
know for certain that your data does not contain uniqueness violations, you can
set this to 0 to speed up large table imports to InnoDB
.
Note that setting this variable to 0 does not require storage engines to ignore duplicate keys.
An engine is still allowed to check for them and issue duplicate-key errors if
it detects them.
warning_count
The number of errors, warnings, and notes that resulted from the last
statement that generated messages. This variable is read only. See Section 12.5.5.42, “SHOW
WARNINGS
Syntax”.