MySQL 4.1 and newer support server-side prepared statements that use an enhanced binary client/server protocol to send data efficiently between the client and server. You can access the prepared statement functionality through a programming library that supports the new protocol, such as the MySQL C API. The MySQL Connector/J and MySQL Connector/NET libraries provide the same capability to Java and .NET, respectively. There’s also a SQL interface to prepared statements, which we discuss later (it’s confusing).

When you create a prepared statement, the client library sends the server a prototype of the actual query you want to use. The server parses and processes this “skeleton” query, stores a structure representing the partially optimized query, and returns a statement handle to the client. The client library can execute the query repeatedly by specifying the statement handle.