MySQL and comments

You can comment columns and tables:

CREATE TABLE example (
  example_column INT COMMENT "This is an example column",
  another_column VARCHAR COMMENT "One more column"
) TYPE=MYISAM COMMENT="This is a comment about table";

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/create-table.html

table_option:
    {ENGINE|TYPE} [=] engine_name
  | AUTO_INCREMENT [=] value
  | AVG_ROW_LENGTH [=] value
  | [DEFAULT] CHARACTER SET [=] charset_name
  | CHECKSUM [=] {0 | 1}
  | [DEFAULT] COLLATE [=] collation_name
  | COMMENT [=] 'string'

Example:

CREATE TABLE foo (
  id int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment COMMENT 'unique ID for each foo entry',
  bar varchar(255) default NULL COMMENT 'the bar of the foo',
  ....
) TYPE=MyISAM;

MySQL supports comments on tables and columns which will show up on show create:

create table example (field1 char(3) comment 'first field') comment='example table'

This is an oldie, and there many response on how to update a columns comment, or create a table with comments. But the given answers on how to view the comments are rather awful

• Nobody confirmed that yes, the comments appear with SHOW TABLES (as the original question pondered)
• Edward Yang suggests the INFORMATION_SCHEMA COLUMNS table

The easiest way to view the comments is via SHOW COLUMNS with the FULL keyword:
SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM mytable

Top voted answer worked for me only after equal sign removal. My working example would be

CREATE TABLE `example` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`two` varchar(255) COMMENT "comment text",
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

if you want comment in table (in phpmyadmin) then follow these steps

1. open localhost/phpmyadmin
2. goto your database and select table
3. now select operations menu from top.
4. and goto table options and edit table comments.

Tested. this worked.

CREATE TABLE `table_with_comment` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `column_a` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'comment comlumn text',
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COMMENT='This is a table comment';

Are you sure you're not looking to use an ENUM column instead? Good MySQL tables should be self-documenting.

An alternate approach would be to comment the schema files that have the SQL you use to define your tables (I assume you have those, and that you're not using PHPMyAdmin to grow table schemas on the fly...)

But if you insist, the INFORMATION_SCHEMA COLUMNS table, specifically the COLUMN_COMMENT column, is probably what you're looking for. It's proprietary MySQL syntax though, so I would tend to avoid it (although the idea of database interoperability is really a joke).

If you use the MySQL Administrator tool to manage/edit your databases, whenever you use the Table Editor, the comment for each column is automatically shown/editable.

If you reached here looking for comments in DATABASE/SCHEMA, it's not supported in MySQL but it is in MariaDB:

https://mariadb.com/kb/en/create-database/

I just wrote an app for this.

Can be found here: https://github.com/SplicePHP/mysql-comments

Allows you to to update multiple database tables and columns in a single view.

Instructions in link.