How to use "central columns" in phpmyadmin?

Question

PMA has the tools for adding the central columns. As far as I understand, it's used with foreign constraints. I have two tables: TableA and TableB.

Structure of TableA: id_of_A, name_of_A_value, ...

Structure of TableB: id_of_B, foreign_id_of_A,... and foreign constraint from foreign_id_of_A to A-table.id_of_A.

And it's very difficult to select needed foreign_id_of_A while insert new row into TableB because only value of id_of_A is visible. Could central columns help me with this problem? How central column works?

Answer 1

Central Column

You can add/remove columns to the list as per your requirement. These columns in the central list will be available to use while you create a new column for a table or create a table itself. You can select a column from central list while creating a new column, it will save you from writing the same column definition over again or from writing different names for similar column.

To allow the usage of this functionality:

1. set up $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] and the phpMyAdmin configuration storage

2. put the table name in $cfg['Servers'][$i]['central_columns'] (e.g. pma__central_columns)

This feature can be disabled by setting the configuration to false.