13.7.5.17. SHOW ENGINES Syntax

SHOW [STORAGE] ENGINES

SHOW ENGINES displays status information about the server's storage engines. This is particularly useful for checking whether a storage engine is supported, or to see what the default engine is.

mysql> SHOW ENGINES\G*************************** 1. row ***************************      Engine: MEMORY     Support: YES     Comment: Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tablesTransactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO*************************** 2. row ***************************      Engine: MyISAM     Support: YES     Comment: MyISAM storage engineTransactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO*************************** 3. row ***************************      Engine: InnoDB     Support: DEFAULT     Comment: Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keysTransactions: YES          XA: YES  Savepoints: YES*************************** 4. row ***************************      Engine: EXAMPLE     Support: YES     Comment: Example storage engineTransactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO*************************** 5. row ***************************      Engine: ARCHIVE     Support: YES     Comment: Archive storage engineTransactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO*************************** 6. row ***************************      Engine: CSV     Support: YES     Comment: CSV storage engineTransactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO*************************** 7. row ***************************      Engine: BLACKHOLE     Support: YES     Comment: /dev/null storage engine (anything you write »              to it disappears)Transactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO*************************** 8. row ***************************      Engine: FEDERATED     Support: YES     Comment: Federated MySQL storage engineTransactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO*************************** 9. row ***************************      Engine: MRG_MYISAM     Support: YES     Comment: Collection of identical MyISAM tablesTransactions: NO          XA: NO  Savepoints: NO

The output from SHOW ENGINES may vary according to the MySQL version used and other factors. The values shown in the Support column indicate the server's level of support for the storage engine, as shown in the following table.

A value of NO means that the server was compiled without support for the engine, so it cannot be enabled at runtime.

A value of DISABLED occurs either because the server was started with an option that disables the engine, or because not all options required to enable it were given. In the latter case, the error log file should contain a reason indicating why the option is disabled. See Section 5.2.2, "The Error Log".

You might also see DISABLED for a storage engine if the server was compiled to support it, but was started with a --skip-engine_name option. For the NDB storage engine, DISABLED means the server was compiled with support for MySQL Cluster, but was not started with the --ndbcluster option.

All MySQL servers support MyISAM tables, because MyISAM is the default storage engine. It is not possible to disable MyISAM.

The Transactions, XA, and Savepoints columns indicate whether the storage engine supports transactions, XA transactions, and savepoints, respectively.