13.7.6.13 SHOW CREATE VIEW Syntax

This statement shows the CREATE VIEW statement that creates the named view.

character_set_client is the session value of the character_set_client system variable when the view was created. collation_connection is the session value of the collation_connection system variable when the view was created.

Use of SHOW CREATE VIEW requires the SHOW VIEW privilege, and the SELECT privilege for the view in question.

View information is also available from the INFORMATION_SCHEMA VIEWS table. See Section 25.35, “The INFORMATION_SCHEMA VIEWS Table”.

MySQL lets you use different sql_mode settings to tell the server the type of SQL syntax to support. For example, you might use the ANSI SQL mode to ensure MySQL correctly interprets the standard SQL concatenation operator, the double bar (||), in your queries. If you then create a view that concatenates items, you might worry that changing the sql_mode setting to a value different from ANSI could cause the view to become invalid. But this is not the case. No matter how you write out a view definition, MySQL always stores it the same way, in a canonical form. Here is an example that shows how the server changes a double bar concatenation operator to a CONCAT() function:

The advantage of storing a view definition in canonical form is that changes made later to the value of sql_mode will not affect the results from the view. However an additional consequence is that comments prior to SELECT are stripped from the definition by the server.