Activate a plugin via a SQL query

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If your goal is automated plugin activation you don’t have to do it via SQL. You could, of course, but why not use functionality that comes with WordPress?

As I mentioned in my comment, the data has been serialized so you just have to

  • unserialize the data,
  • add your plugin,
  • re-serialize the data,
  • and update the option.

Here is a code snippet for that:

$active_plugins = unserialize(get_option('active_plugins'));
if ($active_plugins && is_array($active_plugins)) {
    $active_plugins[] = 'PLUGIN-DIR/PLUGIN-FILE.php'; // as in 'akismet/akismet.php'
    update_option('active_plugins', serialize($active_plugins));
} else {
    // something went wrong...
}