Skip to main content

MY.L6.LOWER_CASE_TABLE_NAMES_RISK — the development-against-production split you cannot switch off

  • Category: safety
  • Level: 6
  • Confidence: deterministic
  • Downtime class: none
  • Stability: stable
  • Suites: audit
  • Applies to: MySQL 8.4
  • Not transferable to MariaDB: this page describes MySQL 8.4 behavior. MariaDB answers the same driver and does not share these semantics, so SQLens refuses it outright rather than reasoning about it — see drivers/unsupported.

A macOS install initializes with 2. A Linux server usually has 0.

So a migration using mixed-case table names passes on one and fails on the other — and nothing in the migration says which server it was written for.

SQLens has no opinion about the right value​

There isn't one. 0 is right on Linux, 2 is what macOS gives you, and which a project wants depends on where it deploys. So this rule never asserts a value of its own. It judges against two things it can stand behind.

1. What the project stated​

// config/sqlens.php
'audit' => [
    'expect' => [
        'lower_case_table_names' => 0,
    ],
],

Unset — the shipped default — this trigger says nothing at all. That is the right amount of noise for a project that has never cared.

2. What the catalog already holds​

On 0 the server is case-sensitive. A schema that already holds a table named Orders is one where a query writing orders will not find it — while on a server initialized with 1 or 2 it would. That is objectively provable without anybody stating a preference, so it fires either way.

Flagged​

CREATE TABLE Orders (id BIGINT PRIMARY KEY);
-- on a server initialized with lower_case_table_names = 0

Preferred​

CREATE TABLE orders (id BIGINT PRIMARY KEY);

The remediation is naming, not a switch​

The value is fixed when the server is initialized and cannot be changed afterwards. Moving it means a new server and a dump/reload.

A rule proposing SET GLOBAL here would be proposing something MySQL refuses — so the finding proposes consistent lower-case naming, which is the thing a project can do this afternoon.

What is not reported​

A catalog that could not be read is reported as undetermined, not as clean: on a case-sensitive server, "we could not list the tables" and "no table depends on its case" are different sentences.

Sources​

The fix material this rule carries​

A finding from this rule carries a payload whose strategy is none: this rule has looked, and there is no safe standard sequence. That is a conclusion rather than an omission — a finding with no payload at all says only that nobody wrote one.

The payload is material for you or an agent to apply. SQLens writes no migration and runs no DDL. See the remediation payload for every field, the placeholder semantics, and the version rules a consumer has to follow.