CREATE TABLE Statement •It is permitted to drop a table with foreign keys referenced by other tables. •Enabling  foreign_key_checks  does not trigger a scan of table data, which means that rows added to a table while  foreign_key_checks  is disabled are not checked for consistency when foreign_key_checks  is re-enabled. Locking MySQL extends metadata locks, as necessary, to tables that are related by a foreign key constraint. Extending metadata locks prevents conflicting DML and DDL operations from executing concurrently on related tables. This feature also enables updates to foreign key metadata when a parent table is modified. In earlier MySQL releases, foreign key metadata, which is owned by the child table, could not be updated safely. If a table is locked explicitly with  LOCK TABLES , any tables related by a foreign key constraint are opened and locked implicitly. For foreign key checks, a shared read-only lock ( LOCK TABLES READ ) is taken on related tables. For cascading updates, a shared-nothing write lock ( LOCK TABLES WRITE ) is taken on related tables that are involved in the operation. To view a foreign key definition, use  SHOW CREATE TABLE : You can obtain information about foreign keys from the  INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE table. An example of a query against this table is shown here: You can obtain information specific to  InnoDB  foreign keys from the  INNODB_FOREIGN  and INNODB_FOREIGN_COLS  tables. Example queries are show here: 2580 +--------------+------------+-------------+-----------------+ | TABLE_SCHEMA | TABLE_NAME | COLUMN_NAME | CONSTRAINT_NAME | +--------------+------------+-------------+-----------------+ | test | child | parent_id | child_ibfk_1 | +--------------+------------+-------------+-----------------+ mysql>  SHOW CREATE TABLE child\G *************************** 1. row *************************** Table: child Create Table: CREATE TABLE ‘child‘ ( ‘id‘ int DEFAULT NULL, ‘parent_id‘ int DEFAULT NULL, KEY ‘par_ind‘ (‘parent_id‘), CONSTRAINT ‘child_ibfk_1‘ FOREIGN KEY (‘parent_id‘) REFERENCES ‘parent‘ (‘id‘) ON DELETE CASCADE ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci mysql>  SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME, CONSTRAINT_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE WHERE REFERENCED_TABLE_SCHEMA IS NOT NULL; Foreign Key Definitions and Metadata mysql>  SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.INNODB_FOREIGN \G *************************** 1. row *************************** ID: test/child_ibfk_1 FOR_NAME: test/child REF_NAME: test/parent N_COLS: 1 TYPE: 1 mysql>  SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.INNODB_FOREIGN_COLS \G *************************** 1. row *************************** ID: test/child_ibfk_1 FOR_COL_NAME: parent_id REF_COL_NAME: id