MySQL Lowercase Table Names in Windows Uppercase names on Unix

Question

I have a a problem whereby my production server runs Unix and my dev server runs MS Windows. The problem is that Windows is not case sensitive and Unix is. So my table set on the production server uses Uppercase table names ie "Customers" and on Windows the table names are in lowercase "customers".

All this is fine until you need to get data from one box to another and your SQL export says insert into "customers" in lowercase, and presto "Unkown table customers". Because the production server is currently on a shared hosting plan i cant change the settings and install the key that ignores case.

So my question, is there a way to get Windows to convert the tables back to the correct case or is there some setting I can include in the export SQL file so that i can upload data without this problem.

Thanks

UPDATE

Here is what I discovered for anybody else having this issue.

If you have already set up your tables running MySQL on Windows adding lower_case_table_names=2 to your my.cnf or my.ini file will not change the case of your tables automatically even if they were originally created using uppercase or mixed case names.

CREATE TABLE "MyTable" will create a new table "mytable" not "MyTable" even when lower_case_table_names=2 is set in your my.cnf file.

To get around this problem use this method

1. Make a copy of your original table
2. Drop your original table
3. Rename your copy table using the correct case.

This is the only way it will work. Hope this helps somebody.

Answer 1

The universal guiding philosophy of Windows with respect to case is "case-insensitive, case stored". That means Windows never intends to discard your case, so it's a little mysterious why your tables on Windows are lower-case.

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but have you tried renaming the tables on the Windows machine so they have the correct case pattern?

Answer 2

Taken from dev.mysql.com:

To avoid data transfer problems arising from lettercase of database or table names, you have two options:

• Use lower_case_table_names=1 on all systems. The main disadvantage with this is that when you use SHOW TABLES or SHOW DATABASES, you do not see the names in their original lettercase.
• Use lower_case_table_names=0 on Unix and lower_case_table_names=2 on Windows. This preserves the lettercase of database and table names. The disadvantage of this is that you must ensure that your statements always refer to your database and table names with the correct lettercase on Windows. If you transfer your statements to Unix, where lettercase is significant, they do not work if the lettercase is incorrect.

Exception: If you are using InnoDB tables and you are trying to avoid these data transfer problems, you should set lower_case_table_names to 1 on all platforms to force names to be converted to lowercase.

If you plan to set the lower_case_table_names system variable to 1 on Unix, you must first convert your old database and table names to lowercase before stopping mysqld and restarting it with the new variable setting.

Answer 3

Hi anyone tell me how to how to convert your old database and table names to lowercase before restarting mysqld.