Stored procedure to add-remove prefix by rename table

What's new, in a nutshell: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-nutshell.html Release notes: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/news-5-1-x.html (In the video, it's the page entitled "Changes in release 5.1.x"). And yes, very early on (at about 2 minutes in) I talk about my take on Monty's controversial post at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it-again-mysql-51-released.html The slides can be downloaded as a PDF at http://technocation.org/files/doc/2008_12_New51.pdf or in Open Office presentation format at http://technocation.org/files/doc/2008_12_New51.odp

When using Oracle, the data dictionary provides us with tons of tables and views, allowing us to fetch information about pretty much anything within the database. We do have information like that in MySQL 5.0 (and up) in the "information_schema" database, but it's scattered through several different tables.Sometimes a client asks us to change the datatype of a column, but forgets to mention the schema name, and sometimes even the table name. As you can imagine, having this kind of information is vital to locate the object and perform the requested action. This kind of behaviour must be related to Murphy's Law.In any case, I'd like to share with you a simple stored procedure that has helped us a lot in the past.