Just a quick note on how to permanently change your MySQL server’s configuration to allow for a bigger max_allowed_packet limit, basically the variable that controls how long a SQL statement can technically get.
First, locate your my.cnf file, the config file that MySQL generally uses as a default. If you are using XAMPP as your development stack, you’ll find it under C:xamppmysqlbinmy.cnf. Open it up in any text editor (PSPad always works well for me!) and run a search on max_allowed_packet. You should get a result under the #The MySQL Sever heading that reads max_allowed_packet = 1M.
Now it becomes a simple matter of changing that line to whatever you want (limit is 1 GB), e.g. max_allowed_packet = 16M, saving it and then firing up your Services tab and restarting the MySQL service.
Done.