CONNECT Create Table Options

Create Table statements for “CONNECT” tables are standard MariaDB create statements specifying engine=CONNECT. There are a few additional table and column options specific to CONNECT.

Table Options

All integers in the above table are unsigned big integers.

Because CONNECT handles many table types; many table type specific options are not in the above list and must be entered using the OPTION_LIST option. The syntax to use is:

... option_list='opname1=opvalue1,opname2=opvalue2...'

Be aware that until Connect 1.5.5, no blanks should be inserted before or after the '=' and ',' characters. The option name is all that is between the start of the string or the last ',' character and the next '=' character, and the option value is all that is between this '=' character and the next ',' or end of string. For instance:

option_list='name=TABLE,coltype=HTML,attribute=border=1;cellpadding=5,headattr=bgcolor=yellow';

This defines four options, 'name', 'coltype', 'attribute', and 'headattr'; with values 'TABLE', 'HTML', 'border=1;cellpadding=5', and 'bgcolor=yellow', respectively. The only restriction is that values cannot contain commas, but they can contain equal signs.

Column Options

• The MAX_DIST and DISTRIB column options are used for block indexing.
• All integers in the above table are unsigned big integers.
• JPATH and XPATH were added to make CREATE TABLE statements more readable, but they do the same thing as FIELD_FORMAT and any of them can be used with the same result.

Index Options

Note 1: Creating a CONNECT table based on file does not erase or create the file if the file name is specified in the CREATE TABLE statement (“outward” table). If the file does not exist, it will be populated by subsequent INSERT or LOAD commands or by the “AS select statement” of the CREATE TABLE command. Unlike the CSV engine, CONNECT easily permits the creation of tables based on already existing files, for instance files made by other applications. However, if the file name is not specified, a file with a name defaulting to tablename.tabletype will be created in the data directory (“inward” table).

Note 2: Dropping a CONNECT table is done with a standard DROP statement. For outward tables, this drops only the CONNECT table definition but does not erase the corresponding data file and index files. Use DELETE or TRUNCATE to do so. This is contrary to data and index files of inward tables are erased on DROP like for other MariaDB engines.