Whoa, I was in the midst of developing a similar tool. I was unaware of mysar!
Thanks,
Shlomi

Or use the mysar tool to do something similar. (https://launchpad.net/mysar
and
http://www.pythian.com/news/4230/mysar-a-sar-like-utility-for-mysql )

Heh, on first reading your comment I thought to myself I should delete this post altogether. But I then realized the flaw is with the examples I provided, which were misleading.

Using "IN" is just fine, but does not differ from reading the entire table. The problem is with iterating the table.

Look at Roland's comment: he got my meaning: I wish to provide with properly named columns+values, not with VARIABLE_NAME, VARIABLE_VALUE.

So the flaw is that I did not provide the kind of result I really was expecting, hence the confusion. I apologize for not being clear.

Regards

SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.GLOBAL_STATUS WHERE VARIABLE_NAME IN ('innodb_os_log_written', 'questions');

Great!
Thanks

there is an easy way around it without the memory table. Just use something like

select MAX(IF(variable_name = 'INNODB_OS_LOG_WRITTEN', VARIABLE_VALUE, NULL)) AS INNODB_OS_LOG_WRITTEN
, MAX(IF(variable_name = 'QUESTIONS', VARIABLE_VALUE, NULL)) AS QUESTIONS
from information_schema.GLOBAL_STATUS