The STATISTICS table provides information about table indexes.
Columns in STATISTICS that represent table statistics hold cached values. The information_schema_stats_expiry system variable defines the period of time before cached table statistics expire. The default is 86400 seconds (24 hours). If there are no cached statistics or statistics have expired, statistics are retrieved from storage engines when querying table statistics columns. To update cached values at any time for a given table, use ANALYZE TABLE. To always retrieve the latest statistics directly from storage engines, set information_schema_stats_expiry=0. For more information, see Section 10.2.3, “Optimizing INFORMATION_SCHEMA Queries”.
If the innodb_read_only system variable is enabled, ANALYZE TABLE may fail because it cannot update statistics tables in the data dictionary, which use InnoDB. For ANALYZE TABLE operations that update the key distribution, failure may occur even if the operation updates the table itself (for example, if it is a MyISAM table). To obtain the updated distribution statistics, set information_schema_stats_expiry=0.
The STATISTICS table has these columns:
-
TABLE_CATALOGThe name of the catalog to which the table containing the index belongs. This value is always
def. -
TABLE_SCHEMAThe name of the schema (database) to which the table containing the index belongs.
-
TABLE_NAMEThe name of the table containing the index.
-
NON_UNIQUE0 if the index cannot contain duplicates, 1 if it can.
-
INDEX_SCHEMAThe name of the schema (database) to which the index belongs.
-
INDEX_NAMEThe name of the index. If the index is the primary key, the name is always
PRIMARY. -
SEQ_IN_INDEXThe column sequence number in the index, starting with 1.
-
COLUMN_NAMEThe column name. See also the description for the
EXPRESSIONcolumn. -
COLLATIONHow the column is sorted in the index. This can have values
A(ascending),D(descending), orNULL(not sorted). -
CARDINALITYAn estimate of the number of unique values in the index. To update this number, run
ANALYZE TABLEor (forMyISAMtables) myisamchk -a.CARDINALITYis counted based on statistics stored as integers, so the value is not necessarily exact even for small tables. The higher the cardinality, the greater the chance that MySQL uses the index when doing joins. -
SUB_PARTThe index prefix. That is, the number of indexed characters if the column is only partly indexed,
NULLif the entire column is indexed.NotePrefix limits are measured in bytes. However, prefix lengths for index specifications in
CREATE TABLE,ALTER TABLE, andCREATE INDEXstatements are interpreted as number of characters for nonbinary string types (CHAR,VARCHAR,TEXT) and number of bytes for binary string types (BINARY,VARBINARY,BLOB). Take this into account when specifying a prefix length for a nonbinary string column that uses a multibyte character set.For additional information about index prefixes, see Section 10.3.5, “Column Indexes”, and Section 15.1.15, “CREATE INDEX Statement”.
-
PACKEDIndicates how the key is packed.
NULLif it is not. -
NULLABLEContains
YESif the column may containNULLvalues and''if not. -
INDEX_TYPEThe index method used (
BTREE,FULLTEXT,HASH,RTREE). -
COMMENTInformation about the index not described in its own column, such as
disabledif the index is disabled. -
INDEX_COMMENTAny comment provided for the index with a
COMMENTattribute when the index was created. -
IS_VISIBLEWhether the index is visible to the optimizer. See Section 10.3.12, “Invisible Indexes”.
-
EXPRESSIONMySQL supports functional key parts (see Functional Key Parts), which affects both the
COLUMN_NAMEandEXPRESSIONcolumns:-
For a nonfunctional key part,
COLUMN_NAMEindicates the column indexed by the key part andEXPRESSIONisNULL. -
For a functional key part,
COLUMN_NAMEcolumn isNULLandEXPRESSIONindicates the expression for the key part.
-
Notes
-
There is no standard
INFORMATION_SCHEMAtable for indexes. The MySQL column list is similar to what SQL Server 2000 returns forsp_statistics, except thatQUALIFIERandOWNERare replaced withCATALOGandSCHEMA, respectively.
Information about table indexes is also available from the SHOW INDEX statement. See Section 15.7.7.23, “SHOW INDEX Statement”. The following statements are equivalent:
SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.STATISTICS
WHERE table_name = 'tbl_name'
AND table_schema = 'db_name'
SHOW INDEX
FROM tbl_name
FROM db_name
Information about generated invisible primary key columns is visible in this table by default. You can cause such information to be hidden by setting show_gipk_in_create_table_and_information_schema = OFF. For more information, see Section 15.1.20.11, “Generated Invisible Primary Keys”.