A table can contain a maximum of 1000 columns.

A table can contain a maximum of 64 secondary indexes.

By default, the index key prefix length limit is 767 bytes. See Section 13.1.13, “CREATE INDEX Syntax”. For example, you might hit this limit with a column prefix index of more than 255 characters on a TEXT or VARCHAR column, assuming a utf8mb3 character set and the maximum of 3 bytes for each character. When the innodb_large_prefix configuration option is enabled, the index key prefix length limit is raised to 3072 bytes for InnoDB tables that use DYNAMIC or COMPRESSED row format.

If you specify an index key prefix length that exceeds the limit, the length is silently reduced to the maximum length.

When innodb_large_prefix is enabled, attempting to create an index key prefix with a length greater than 3072 bytes for a DYNAMIC or COMPRESSED table causes an ER_INDEX_COLUMN_TOO_LONG error.

The limits that apply to index key prefixes also apply to full-column index keys.

A maximum of 16 columns is permitted for multicolumn indexes. Exceeding the limit returns an error.

ERROR 1070 (42000): Too many key parts specified; max 16 parts allowed

The maximum row length, except for variable-length columns (VARBINARY, VARCHAR, BLOB and TEXT), is slightly less than half of a page. That is, the maximum row length is about 8000 bytes. LONGBLOB and LONGTEXT columns must be less than 4GB, and the total row length, including BLOB and TEXT columns, must be less than 4GB.

If a row is less than half a page long, all of it is stored locally within the page. If it exceeds half a page, variable-length columns are chosen for external off-page storage until the row fits within half a page, as described in Section 14.15.2, “File Space Management”.

The row size for BLOB columns that are chosen for external off-page storage should not exceed 10% of the combined redo log file size. If the row size exceeds 10% of the combined redo log file size, InnoDB could overwrite the most recent checkpoint which may result in lost data during crash recovery. (Bug#69477).

Although InnoDB supports row sizes larger than 65,535 bytes internally, MySQL itself imposes a row-size limit of 65,535 for the combined size of all columns:

mysql> CREATE TABLE t (a VARCHAR(8000), b VARCHAR(10000),
    -> c VARCHAR(10000), d VARCHAR(10000), e VARCHAR(10000),
    -> f VARCHAR(10000), g VARCHAR(10000)) ENGINE=InnoDB;
ERROR 1118 (42000): Row size too large. The maximum row size for the
used table type, not counting BLOBs, is 65535. You have to change some
columns to TEXT or BLOBs

See Section C.10.4, “Limits on Table Column Count and Row Size”.

On some older operating systems, files must be less than 2GB. This is not a limitation of InnoDB itself, but if you require a large tablespace, configure it using several smaller data files rather than one large data file.

The combined size of the InnoDB log files must be less than 4GB.

The minimum tablespace size is slightly larger than 10MB. The maximum tablespace size is four billion pages (64TB). This is also the maximum size for a table.

The default page size in InnoDB is 16KB.

Changing the page size is not a supported operation and there is no guarantee that InnoDB functions normally with a page size other than 16KB. Problems compiling or running InnoDB may occur. In particular, ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED in the Barracuda file format assumes that the page size is at most 16KB and uses 14-bit pointers.

A version of InnoDB built for one page size cannot use data files or log files from a version built for a different page size. This limitation could affect restore or downgrade operations using data from MySQL 5.6, which does support page sizes other than 16KB.

InnoDB tables do not support FULLTEXT indexes.

InnoDB tables support spatial data types, but not indexes on them.

ANALYZE TABLE determines index cardinality (as displayed in the Cardinality column of SHOW INDEX output) by doing random dives to each of the index trees and updating index cardinality estimates accordingly. Because these are only estimates, repeated runs of ANALYZE TABLE could produce different numbers. This makes ANALYZE TABLE fast on InnoDB tables but not 100% accurate because it does not take all rows into account.

You can change the number of random dives by modifying the innodb_stats_sample_pages system variable.

MySQL uses index cardinality estimates only in join optimization. If some join is not optimized in the right way, you can try using ANALYZE TABLE. In the few cases that ANALYZE TABLE does not produce values good enough for your particular tables, you can use FORCE INDEX with your queries to force the use of a particular index, or set the max_seeks_for_key system variable to ensure that MySQL prefers index lookups over table scans. See Section 5.1.5, “Server System Variables”, and Section B.5.5, “Optimizer-Related Issues”.

If statements or transactions are running on a table and ANALYZE TABLE is run on the same table followed by a second ANALYZE TABLE operation, the second ANALYZE TABLE operation is blocked until the statements or transactions are completed. This behavior occurs because ANALYZE TABLE marks the currently loaded table definition as obsolete when ANALYZE TABLE is finished running. New statements or transactions (including a second ANALYZE TABLE statement) must load the new table definition into the table cache, which cannot occur until currently running statements or transactions are completed and the old table definition is purged. Loading multiple concurrent table definitions is not supported.

SHOW TABLE STATUS does not give accurate statistics on InnoDB tables, except for the physical size reserved by the table. The row count is only a rough estimate used in SQL optimization.

InnoDB does not keep an internal count of rows in a table because concurrent transactions might “see” different numbers of rows at the same time. Consequently, SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t statements only count rows visible to the current transaction.

To process a SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t statement, InnoDB scans an index of the table, which takes some time if the index is not entirely in the buffer pool. For a faster count, you can create a counter table and let your application update it according to the inserts and deletes it does. However, this method may not scale well in situations where thousands of concurrent transactions are initiating updates to the same counter table. If an approximate row count is sufficient, SHOW TABLE STATUS can be used.

InnoDB handles SELECT COUNT(*) and SELECT COUNT(1) operations in the same way. There is no performance difference.

On Windows, InnoDB always stores database and table names internally in lowercase. To move databases in a binary format from Unix to Windows or from Windows to Unix, create all databases and tables using lowercase names.

An AUTO_INCREMENT column ai_col must be defined as part of an index such that it is possible to perform the equivalent of an indexed SELECT MAX(ai_col) lookup on the table to obtain the maximum column value. Typically, this is achieved by making the column the first column of some table index.

InnoDB sets an exclusive lock on the end of the index associated with the AUTO_INCREMENT column while initializing a previously specified AUTO_INCREMENT column on a table.

With innodb_autoinc_lock_mode=0, InnoDB uses a special AUTO-INC table lock mode where the lock is obtained and held to the end of the current SQL statement while accessing the auto-increment counter. Other clients cannot insert into the table while the AUTO-INC table lock is held. The same behavior occurs for “bulk inserts” with innodb_autoinc_lock_mode=1. Table-level AUTO-INC locks are not used with innodb_autoinc_lock_mode=2. For more information, See Section 14.11.6, “AUTO_INCREMENT Handling in InnoDB”.

When you restart the MySQL server, InnoDB may reuse an old value that was generated for an AUTO_INCREMENT column but never stored (that is, a value that was generated during an old transaction that was rolled back).

When an AUTO_INCREMENT integer column runs out of values, a subsequent INSERT operation returns a duplicate-key error. This is general MySQL behavior, similar to how MyISAM works.

DELETE FROM tbl_name does not regenerate the table but instead deletes all rows, one by one.

Under some conditions, TRUNCATE tbl_name for an InnoDB table is mapped to DELETE FROM tbl_name. See Section 13.1.33, “TRUNCATE TABLE Syntax”.

Cascaded foreign key actions do not activate triggers.

You cannot create a table with a column name that matches the name of an internal InnoDB column (including DB_ROW_ID, DB_TRX_ID, DB_ROLL_PTR, and DB_MIX_ID). This restriction applies to use of the names in any letter case.

mysql> CREATE TABLE t1 (c1 INT, db_row_id INT) ENGINE=INNODB;
ERROR 1166 (42000): Incorrect column name 'db_row_id'

LOCK TABLES acquires two locks on each table if innodb_table_locks=1 (the default). In addition to a table lock on the MySQL layer, it also acquires an InnoDB table lock. Versions of MySQL before 4.1.2 did not acquire InnoDB table locks; the old behavior can be selected by setting innodb_table_locks=0. If no InnoDB table lock is acquired, LOCK TABLES completes even if some records of the tables are being locked by other transactions.

As of MySQL 5.5.3, innodb_table_locks=0 has no effect for tables locked explicitly with LOCK TABLES ... WRITE. It still has an effect for tables locked for read or write by LOCK TABLES ... WRITE implicitly (for example, through triggers) or by LOCK TABLES ... READ.

All InnoDB locks held by a transaction are released when the transaction is committed or aborted. Thus, it does not make much sense to invoke LOCK TABLES on InnoDB tables in autocommit=1 mode because the acquired InnoDB table locks would be released immediately.

You cannot lock additional tables in the middle of a transaction because LOCK TABLES performs an implicit COMMIT and UNLOCK TABLES.

The limit of 1023 concurrent data-modifying transactions has been raised in MySQL 5.5 and above. The limit is now 128 * 1023 concurrent transactions that generate undo records. You can remove any workarounds that require changing the proper structure of your transactions, such as committing more frequently.