Temporary Tables - SQL Server vs MySQL

Continuing my series on how same things can be done differently in SQL Server and MySQL, in this post, we will see temporary table support in SQL Server vs MySQL.

We may often need to create a temporary table while processing data to provide a workspace for storing intermediate results. Both SQL Server and MySQL support temporary tables.

In SQL Server, all temporary tables should be prefixed by the # sign

Consider this table

create table #test
(
id int,
names varchar(100)
)

insert into #test(id, names)
select 1,'test'
select * from #test

We can drop this table by using a DROP command

DROP table #test

In MySQL, we have to use the keyword 'temporary' when creating a temporary table

Consider the following code

create temporary table if not exists test
(
id int,
names varchar(100)
)

insert into test(id, names)
select 1,'test'
select * from test

The above creates a temporary table called test in the current session if it is not already available. To drop a temporary table in MySQL, we can use the following code

drop temporary table test

About The Author

Madhivanan,an MSc computer Science graduate from Chennai-India, works as a works as a Lead Subject Matter Expert at a company that simplifies BIG data. He started his career as a developer working with Visual Basic 6.0, SQL Server 2000 and Crystal Report 8. As years went by, he started working more on writing queries in SQL Server. He now has good level of knowledge in SQLServer, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL as well. He is also one of the leading posters at www.sqlteam.com and a moderator at www.sql-server-performance.com. His T-sql blog is at http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan