MySQL 8.0 Reference Manual Including MySQL NDB Cluster 8.0

7.6 MySQL Server Plugins

MySQL supports an plugin API that enables creation of server plugins. Plugins can be loaded at server startup, or loaded and unloaded at runtime without restarting the server. The plugins supported by this interface include, but are not limited to, storage engines, INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables, full-text parser plugins, and server extensions.

MySQL distributions include several plugins that implement server extensions:

The following sections describe how to install and uninstall plugins, and how to determine at runtime which plugins are installed and obtain information about them. For information about writing plugins, see The MySQL Plugin API.