Column aliases not displaying in Oracle SQL Developer with MariaDB and MySQL JDBC

Data and Databases
1

I’m having trouble with column aliases in Oracle SQL Developer. I’m connected to a MariaDB database using a MySQL JDBC driver. When I run a query with aliases, the result shows the original column names instead of the aliases.

Here’s a simple example:

CREATE TABLE staff (
    full_name VARCHAR(50),
    contact VARCHAR(15),
    years_old INT,
    region CHAR(2)
);

INSERT INTO staff VALUES
('John Doe', '555-1234', 35, 'NY'),
('Jane Smith', '555-5678', 28, 'CA');

SELECT full_name, contact, years_old AS age, region AS location FROM staff;

The output shows the original column names, not the aliases ‘age’ and ‘location’. However, if I use functions like CAST, the aliases work fine.

I’ve tried different alias syntaxes (AS, quotes, backticks) but nothing helps. Interestingly, the aliases work correctly when I connect directly to MariaDB via command line.

Any ideas why this is happening with my SQL Developer setup? Is it a config issue between SQL Developer, MySQL JDBC, and MariaDB?

2

hmm, interesting issue! have u tried using derived columns instead of aliases? like SELECT full_name, contact, years_old age, region location FROM staff? Sometimes that works better with weird driver combos. Also, what version of SQL Developer r u using? Might be worth checking for any known bugs?

3

hav u tried updating ur SQL Developer? sometimes older versions hav quirks with different DBs. also, check ur JDBC driver version - might need an update too. if those don’t work, maybe try a different client like DBeaver? it’s pretty good with MariaDB

4

This issue seems to be specific to the interaction between Oracle SQL Developer and MariaDB via the MySQL JDBC driver. It’s likely a compatibility problem or a bug in how SQL Developer interprets the result set metadata from MariaDB.

As a workaround, you could try using derived tables or subqueries to force SQL Developer to recognize the aliases. For example:

SELECT * FROM (
    SELECT full_name, contact, years_old AS age, region AS location 
    FROM staff
) subquery;

This often tricks the client into displaying the aliases correctly. If this doesn’t work, you might want to consider using a different SQL client that’s more compatible with MariaDB, such as DBeaver or HeidiSQL. Alternatively, you could report this as a bug to Oracle Support for SQL Developer, as it should ideally handle aliases correctly regardless of the underlying database system.