The EXAMPLE storage engine is a stub engine that do nothing. Its purpose is to serve as an example in the MySQL source code that illustrates how to begin writing new storage engines. As such, it is primarily of interest to developers.To examine the source for the EXAMPLE engine, look in the sql/examples directory of a MySQL source distribution.

When you create an EXAMPLE table, the server creates a table format file in the database directory. The file begins with the table name and has an .frm extension. No other files are created. No data can be stored into the table. Retrievals return an empty result.