Designing and Creating Tables - Database Design Manual: Using MySQL for Windows - page 40

• parenttable is the name of the table where the column resides.

We can add this to the CREATE definition for our log table as follows:

CREATE TABLE Log ( ID MEDIUMINT
NOT NULL
AUTO_INCREMENT
PRIMARY KEY,
CookieID MEDIUMINT,
WebpageID MEDIUMINT,
Browser VARCHAR(50),
DateCreated DATETIME,
IPNumber VARCHAR(15),
ReferringPage VARCHAR(255),
FOREIGN KEY (WebpageID ) REFERENCES Webpage (ID),
FOREIGN KEY (CookieID ) REFERENCES Cookies (CookieID)
)
TYPE = InnoDB

Figure 4.10 shows this table being described.
If you try to create this table after you have run the previous script you will get a Ta b l e
already exists error. You can add the words:

IF NOT EXISTS

directly after the:

CREATE TABLE

statement to stop MySQL generating an error; however this does not replace the table, it
just suppresses the error if it already exists, so it is of questionable use. Other versions of

Figure 4.10 DESCRIBE Log table.