I realize that these last months I have not published anything... it's because I was quite busy developing a prominent feature: [Recursive] Common Table Expressions , also known as [recursive] CTE , [recursive] subquery factoring , WITH [RECURSIVE] clause. This feature is available today, in a Labs release of the MySQL Server. In my post here , you will find more information: syntax, capacities, examples... Feels good to have this big piece of work finally out!