The FEDERATED storage engine lets you access data from a remote MySQL database without using replication or cluster technology. Querying a local FEDERATED table automatically pulls the data from the remote (federated) tables. No data is stored on the local tables.

To include the FEDERATED storage engine if you build MySQL from source, invoke CMake with the -DWITH_FEDERATED_STORAGE_ENGINE option.

The FEDERATED storage engine is not enabled by default in the running server; to enable FEDERATED, you must start the MySQL server binary using the --federated option.

To examine the source for the FEDERATED engine, look in the storage/federated directory of a MySQL source distribution.