Teraplane is exactly right, but I thought I would add a link to the MySQL documentation on the information_schema database:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/r
It's very useful for finding the definitions of tables, columns, views and other database objects without parsing SHOW CREATE TABLE or similar commands. For example, if you want to know all the tables that have a column with the name "id":
SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.columns
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by: teraplanePosted on 2007-08-11 at 22:58:04ID: 19678304
The information_schema is there as meta data, or a table about tables. (Orcale has had this for ages). It is there when you want to get a query that can return info about tables and columns within tables etc.
All user setting are still maintained the old way, in the uers and priviliges tables.