How can I directly view blobs in MySQL Workbench

Question

I'm using MySQL Workbench CE 5.2.30 CE / Rev 6790 . When execute the following statement:

SELECT OLD_PASSWORD("test")

I only get back a nice BLOB icon, I need to left-click to select the cell, right-click and choose "Open Value in viewer" and select the "Text" tab.

Using the same with phpMyAdmin, I get directly back the value of the OLD_PASSWORD call. It's just an example, but is there a way to directly see such results in the output?

Answer 1

In short:

1. Go to Edit > Preferences
2. Choose SQL Editor
3. Under SQL Execution, check Treat BINARY/VARBINARY as nonbinary character string
4. Restart MySQL Workbench (you will not be prompted or informed of this requirement).

In MySQL Workbench 6.0+

1. Go to Edit > Preferences
2. Choose SQL Queries
3. Under Query Results, check Treat BINARY/VARBINARY as nonbinary character string
4. It's not mandatory to restart MySQL Workbench (you will not be prompted or informed of this requirement).*

With this setting you will be able to concatenate fields without getting blobs.

I think this applies to versions 5.2.22 and later and is the result of this MySQL bug.

Disclaimer: I don't know what the downside of this setting is - maybe when you are selecting BINARY/VARBINARY values you will see it as plain text which may be misleading and/or maybe it will hinder performance if they are large enough?