In MS Access (2003), a column can have both a "name" (required obviously) and a "caption" (optional). It can also have a "description" (optional) and an "input mask".

The main advantage is that the column name can be code friendy (eg lower case with underscores), while the caption can be user friendly (eg title case / proper case, with spaces, or with completely different words).

If a column has a caption, then it is used by default in forms.

[Q1] Can this be achieved in MySQL? I'm most interested in the captions, but would also welcome advise re column linked description and input mask. I haven't searched re input mask yet.

I'd prefer to use an approach which can be implemented in almost any SQL database. So, the less proprietary, less hacky, and more "standard SQL" (sic) the approach, the better.

I note that, in MySQL, a column can have a "comment". I could use these, and use code to extract them when required. But (1) this is inconvenient and hacky and (2) it seems to me that the comment should be used for another purpose (eg notes to self or other developers, or to advise re data entry).

I'm currently using phpMyAdmin (via XAMPP), but I used MySQL Workbench previously.
I can't find any information about this on either of those sites or on Stack Overflow. 

These keywords and links are related to the topic, but don't answer the question:

```
COLUMN_NAME
COLUMN_COMMENT

```

[MS Access: setting table column Caption or Description in DDL?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/3521188)

[MySQL query to get column names?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/4165195/1998432)

[MySQL 5.7 Reference Manual :: 19 INFORMATION\_SCHEMA Tables](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/columns-table.html)

[Commenting your MySQL database... (yada yada)](http://www.testically.org/2011/02/08/commenting-your-mysql-database-tables-using-doctrine-schema-yml-to-ease-work-with-phpmyadmin/)

Thanks in advance.

---

@Jim Garrison
Thanks for replying. I didn't vote for that answer because it's not doing a lot of what Access does. *Not your fault though - you're just the messenger! I'm not sure how one should thank someone for their effort in Stack Overflow, since the comment area says not to use it for that purpose. Cheers anyway for the information.*

I had an idea, although it too is far from ideal.

I could create a separate table to hold supplemental metadata (captions/aliases, descriptions, input masks etc) about all other tables in the database.

Its structure would be:

```
id | table_name | column_name | friendly_alias | description | input_mask

```

Unfortunately, it would be a chore to maintain, unless there would be a way of automatically populating it with table names and column names, and updating these values automatically if they were renamed, inserted or deleted.

It really would be much better if it were an extension of the built in information schema table(s) though, with null values allowed for those optional fields.

Could it be a separate table, but with a 1:1 relationship with the built in information schema table(s)?

*Bear in mind that I'm an amateur enthusiast by the way!*