MySQL in a Nutshell

Show Me

Let's take a moment to admire our work and see what we've done so far. To get a list of databases, use the SHOW DATABASES statement like so:

SHOW DATABASES;
   
+-----------+
| Database  |
+-----------+
| bookstore |
| mysql     |
| test      |
+-----------+

The result of the SHOW DATABASES statement lists not only the database that we've created, but also two others. One is the mysql database, which contains data on user privileges. This was covered in Chapter 2. The third one listed is the test database, which is set up by default when MySQL is installed. It's there as a convenience for you to be able to add tables or run SQL statements for testing.

To see a list of tables in the bookstore database, once we select the bookstore database with the USE statement shown earlier, we would enter the following statement:

SHOW TABLES;
   
+---------------------+
| Tables_in_bookstore |
+---------------------+
| authors             |
| books               |
+---------------------+

The result of the SHOWTABLES statement provides a list containing our two tables, just as we expected. If you want to see a list of tables from another database while still using the bookstore database, add a FROM clause to the previous statement:

USE bookstore;
SHOW TABLES FROM mysql;

This displays a list of tables from the mysql database while still anchoring the client in the bookstore database.