3.4 Common Preferences and Configurations

Commonly used configuration options and preferences include:

• Rescan for Local MySQL Instances: Right-click on the home screen, and this option will scan your system for MySQL instances and add connection tiles to the home screen.

• Safe Updates: When enabled (default), MySQL Workbench will not execute UPDATE or DELETE statements if a key is not defined in the WHERE clause. In other words, MySQL Workbench attempts to prevent big mistakes, such as deleting a large number of (or all) rows. Set from the SQL Editor preferences tab.

  For example, DELETE FROM foo is considered unsafe, whereas DELETE FROM foo WHERE id = 1 is safe and will always execute.

• Default Target MySQL Version: For modeling, set this Modeling MySQL preference to your target MySQL Server version. This affects the generated syntax and database structure in relation to how MySQL changed over time. Having the wrong version may generate invalid syntax for your MySQL server.

• Combine Management Tools and Schema Tree: This refers to the left panel in the SQL Editor, where the Management and Schemas areas are on one or two separate tabs.

  This behavior can also be toggled at runtime by clicking the icon.

• Save snapshot of open editors on close: By default, MySQL Workbench saves all query tabs and reopens them when you restart it. Use the related Auto-save scripts interval setting to modify its behavior. Both are set from the SQL Editor preferences tab.

  Related behavior: Right-click on an SQL tab and choose either Save tab (to save the tab to a file) or Close Other Tabs to close all other SQL editor tabs.

• Enable Code Completion in Editors: Code suggestions can be activated either manually, or automatically if the related Automatically Start Code Completion setting is also enabled. In addition, enable Use UPPERCASE keywords on completion to code suggest upper case SQL keywords, such as INSERT instead of insert.

  Related behavior: The Context Help right panel in the SQL editor displays documentation for SQL statements, and is disabled/enabled from the right panel. For example, typing INSERT will load documentation for the INSERT statement in the right panel.