I'm new to the ng, don't mean to step on anyone's toes, but I've
sesrched the archives with no success on this one.

I'd like to create aliases for tablenames. I don't mean a "table
alias", which is really a "row alias" (thanks to Bill Karwin for that
datum); that won't help me because I would still have to enter the
tablename at least once per query, per row. I mean an alias for a
tablename that can be used in queries, and stored either in the schema
somewhere or maybe applied once on a per-session basis.

I have *inherited* a db with some really stupidly long tablenames, so
writing queries is a hassle. Any typo in a tablename breaks the whole
query, of course. Here's an example of what I mean: Let's say I have
a table called tbl_data_reference_stock_22 ... here's a typical query:

SELECT tbl_data_reference_stock_22.uid,
tbl_data_reference_stock_22.store_id FROM tbl_data_reference_stock_22
WHERE tbl_data_reference_stock_22.session_id = '1'

I'd like to alias the tablename to "drs22". So the query would
become:

SELECT drs22.uid, drs22.store_id FROM drs22 WHERE drs22.session_id =
'1'

Is there a way to do this?

thanks in advance

--
FW

mySQL version 5.0