Extensions to SHOW Statements INFORMATION_SCHEMA  is an information database, so its name is included in the output from  SHOW DATABASES . Similarly,  SHOW TABLES  can be used with  INFORMATION_SCHEMA  to obtain a list of its tables: •Several  SHOW  statements accept a  WHERE  clause that provides more flexibility in specifying which rows to display. SHOW COLUMNS  and  DESCRIBE  can display information about the columns in individual INFORMATION_SCHEMA  tables. SHOW  statements that accept a  LIKE  clause to limit the rows displayed also permit a  WHERE  clause that specifies more general conditions that selected rows must satisfy: The  WHERE  clause, if present, is evaluated against the column names displayed by the  SHOW  statement. For example, the  SHOW CHARACTER SET  statement produces these output columns: 4890 mysql>  SHOW CHARACTER SET; +----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+--------+ | Charset | Description | Default collation | Maxlen | +----------+-----------------------------+---------------------+--------+ | big5 | Big5 Traditional Chinese | big5_chinese_ci | 2 | | dec8 | DEC West European | dec8_swedish_ci | 1 | SHOW CHARACTER SET SHOW COLLATION SHOW COLUMNS SHOW DATABASES SHOW FUNCTION STATUS SHOW INDEX SHOW OPEN TABLES SHOW PROCEDURE STATUS SHOW STATUS SHOW TABLE STATUS SHOW TABLES SHOW TRIGGERS SHOW VARIABLES mysql>  SHOW TABLES FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA; +---------------------------------------+ | Tables_in_INFORMATION_SCHEMA | +---------------------------------------+ | CHARACTER_SETS | | COLLATIONS | | COLLATION_CHARACTER_SET_APPLICABILITY | | COLUMNS | | COLUMN_PRIVILEGES | | ENGINES | | EVENTS | | FILES | | KEY_COLUMN_USAGE | | PARTITIONS | | PLUGINS | | PROCESSLIST | | REFERENTIAL_CONSTRAINTS | | ROUTINES | | SCHEMATA | | SCHEMA_PRIVILEGES | | STATISTICS | | TABLES | | TABLE_CONSTRAINTS | | TABLE_PRIVILEGES | | TRIGGERS | | USER_PRIVILEGES | | VIEWS | +---------------------------------------+