To find out the columns in a table in mysql where you might need it programatically. You can use the information schema.
SELECT group_concat(column_name) as columnNames
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE
`TABLE_NAME` = 'EMPLOYEE_TABLE'
This would produce the output as a single row instead of columns.
> EMP_ID,EMP_NAME,EMP_AGE
The group_concat transposes a result set from rows into columns, which is very ideal and can save some compute logic on the application side.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/group-by-functions.html#function_group-concat
