Exploring the event scheduler

The Event Scheduler (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/events.html), another new feature of MySQL 5.1, permits the creation of tasks that will run automatically according to a schedule. The schedule is quite flexible and permits, for example, a statement to be run every ten seconds, starting from midnight of May 18, 2011. These can be one-time events or recurring ones.

Activating the scheduler

We should first verify whether the scheduler is active on our server. If not, we need to activate it. Otherwise, nothing will happen! We will start by entering the following statement in the query box:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'event%';

Next, we look in the results for a variable named event_scheduler. If this variable is set to OFF, we need to ask the system administrator (or someone with the SUPER privilege) to execute the following statement:

SET GLOBAL event_scheduler = ON;

Granting EVENT permission

Every user who wants to create or drop an event needs the EVENT privilege...