Even before completing your upgrade to MySQL 5.5, you can preview whether your database server or application works correctly with InnoDB as the default storage engine. To set up InnoDB as the default storage engine with an earlier MySQL release, either specify on the command line --default-storage-engine=InnoDB, or add to your my.cnf file default-storage-engine=innodb in the [mysqld] section, then restart the server.

Since changing the default storage engine only affects new tables as they are created, run all your application installation and setup steps to confirm that everything installs properly. Then exercise all the application features to make sure all the data loading, editing, and querying features work. If a table relies on some MyISAM-specific feature, you'll receive an error; add the ENGINE=MyISAM clause to the CREATE TABLE statement to avoid the error (for example, tables that rely on full-text search must be MyISAM tables rather than InnoDB ones).

If you did not make a deliberate decision about the storage engine, and you just want to preview how certain tables work when they're created under InnoDB, issue the command ALTER TABLE table_name ENGINE=InnoDB; for each table. Or, to run test queries and other statements without disturbing the original table, make a copy like so:

CREATE TABLE InnoDB_Table (...) ENGINE=InnoDB AS SELECT * FROM MyISAM_Table;
        

Since there are so many performance enhancements in the InnoDB that is part of MySQL 5.5, to get a true idea of the performance with a full application under a realistic workload, install the real MySQL 5.5 and run benchmarks.

Test the full application lifecycle, from installation, through heavy usage, and server restart. Kill the server process while the database is busy to simulate a power failure, and verify that the data is recovered successfully when you restart the server.

Test any replication configurations, especially if you use different MySQL versions and options on the master and the slaves.