Chapter 15. The InnoDB Storage Engine

Table of Contents

15.1. InnoDB Overview
15.2. InnoDB Contact Information
15.3. InnoDB Configuration
15.4. InnoDB Startup Options
15.5. Creating the InnoDB Tablespace
15.5.1. Dealing with InnoDB Initialization Problems
15.6. Creating InnoDB Tables
15.6.1. How to Use Transactions in InnoDB with Different APIs
15.6.2. Converting MyISAM Tables to InnoDB
15.6.3. How an AUTO_INCREMENT Column Works in InnoDB
15.6.4. FOREIGN KEY Constraints
15.6.5. InnoDB and MySQL Replication
15.6.6. Using Per-Table Tablespaces
15.7. Adding and Removing InnoDB Data and Log Files
15.8. Backing Up and Recovering an InnoDB Database
15.8.1. Forcing Recovery
15.8.2. Checkpoints
15.9. Moving an InnoDB Database to Another Machine
15.10. InnoDB Transaction Model and Locking
15.10.1. InnoDB Lock Modes
15.10.2. InnoDB and AUTOCOMMIT
15.10.3. InnoDB and TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL
15.10.4. Consistent Non-Locking Read
15.10.5. Locking Reads SELECT ... FOR UPDATE and SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE
15.10.6. Next-Key Locking: Avoiding the Phantom Problem
15.10.7. An Example of How the Consistent Read Works in InnoDB
15.10.8. Locks Set by Different SQL Statements in InnoDB
15.10.9. When Does MySQL Implicitly Commit or Roll Back a Transaction?
15.10.10. Deadlock Detection and Rollback
15.10.11. How to Cope with Deadlocks
15.11. InnoDB Performance Tuning Tips
15.11.1. SHOW INNODB STATUS and the InnoDB Monitors
15.12. Implementation of Multi-Versioning
15.13. Table and Index Structures
15.13.1. Physical Structure of an Index
15.13.2. Insert Buffering
15.13.3. Adaptive Hash Indexes
15.13.4. Physical Record Structure
15.14. File Space Management and Disk I/O
15.14.1. Disk I/O
15.14.2. Using Raw Devices for the Tablespace
15.14.3. File Space Management
15.14.4. Defragmenting a Table
15.15. InnoDB Error Handling
15.15.1. InnoDB Error Codes
15.15.2. Operating System Error Codes
15.16. Restrictions on InnoDB Tables
15.17. InnoDB Troubleshooting
15.17.1. Troubleshooting InnoDB Data Dictionary Operations

15.1. InnoDB Overview

InnoDB provides MySQL with a transaction-safe (ACID compliant) storage engine with commit, rollback, and crash recovery capabilities. InnoDB does locking on the row level and also provides an Oracle-style consistent non-locking read in SELECT statements. These features increase multi-user concurrency and performance. There is no need for lock escalation in InnoDB because row-level locks in InnoDB fit in very little space. InnoDB also supports FOREIGN KEY constraints. In SQL queries you can freely mix InnoDB type tables with other table types of MySQL, even within the same query.

InnoDB has been designed for maximum performance when processing large data volumes. Its CPU efficiency is probably not matched by any other disk-based relational database engine.

Fully integrated with MySQL Server, the InnoDB storage engine maintains its own buffer pool for caching data and indexes in main memory. InnoDB stores its tables and indexes in a tablespace, which may consist of several files (or raw disk partitions). This is different from, for example, MyISAM tables where each table is stored using separate files. InnoDB tables can be of any size even on operating systems where file size is limited to 2GB.

In MySQL 5.0, InnoDB is included in binary distributions by default. The Windows Essentials installer makes InnoDB the MySQL default table type on Windows.

InnoDB is used in production at numerous large database sites requiring high performance. The famous Internet news site Slashdot.org runs on InnoDB. Mytrix, Inc. stores over 1TB of data in InnoDB, and another site handles an average load of 800 inserts/updates per second in InnoDB.

InnoDB is published under the same GNU GPL License Version 2 (of June 1991) as MySQL. For more information on MySQL licensing, see http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/.

For the InnoDB storage engine, there's a dedicated forum available on http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?22.

15.2. InnoDB Contact Information

Contact information for Innobase Oy, producer of the InnoDB engine:

Web site: http://www.innodb.com/
Email: 
Phone: +358-9-6969 3250 (office)
       +358-40-5617367 (mobile)

Innobase Oy Inc.
World Trade Center Helsinki
Aleksanterinkatu 17
P.O.Box 800
00101 Helsinki
Finland

15.3. InnoDB Configuration

In MySQL 5.0, the InnoDB storage engine is enabled by default. If you don't want to use InnoDB tables, you can add the skip-innodb option to your MySQL option file.

Two important disk-based resources managed by the InnoDB storage engine are its tablespace data files and its log files.

If you specify no InnoDB configuration options, MySQL 5.0 creates an auto-extending 10MB data file named ibdata1 and two 5MB log files named ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 in the MySQL data directory.

Note: InnoDB provides MySQL with a transaction-safe (ACID compliant) storage engine with commit, rollback, and crash recovery capabilities. It cannot do so if the underlying operating system and hardware does not work as advertised. Many operating systems or disk subsystems may delay or reorder write operations in order to improve performance. On some operating systems, the very system call (fsync()) that should wait until all unwritten data for a file has been flushed may actually return before the data has been flushed to stable storage. Because of this, an operating system crash or a power outage may destroy recently committed data, or in the worst case, even corrupt the database because of write operations having been reordered. If data integrity is important to you, you should perform some “pull-the-plug” tests before using anything in production. On Mac OS X 10.3 and later, InnoDB uses a special fcntl() file flush method. Under Linux, it is advisable to disable the write-back cache.

On ATAPI hard disks, a command like hdparm -W0 /dev/hda may work. Beware that some drives or disk controllers may be unable to disable the write-back cache.

Note: To get good performance, you should explicitly provide InnoDB parameters as discussed in the following examples. Naturally, you should edit the settings to suit your hardware and requirements.

To set up the InnoDB tablespace files, use the innodb_data_file_path option in the [mysqld] section of the my.cnf option file. On Windows, you can use my.ini instead. The value of innodb_data_file_path should be a list of one or more data file specifications. If you name more than one data file, separate them by semicolon (‘;’) characters:

innodb_data_file_path=datafile_spec1[;datafile_spec2]...

For example, a setting that explicitly creates a tablespace having the same characteristics as the default is as follows:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_file_path=ibdata1:10M:autoextend

This setting configures a single 10MB data file named ibdata1 that is auto-extending. No location for the file is given, so the default is the MySQL data directory.

Sizes are specified using M or G suffix letters to indicate units of MB or GB.

A tablespace containing a fixed-size 50MB data file named ibdata1 and a 50MB auto-extending file named ibdata2 in the data directory can be configured like this:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_file_path=ibdata1:50M;ibdata2:50M:autoextend

The full syntax for a data file specification includes the filename, its size, and several optional attributes:

file_name:file_size[:autoextend[:max:max_file_size]]

The autoextend attribute and those following can be used only for the last data file in the innodb_data_file_path line.

If you specify the autoextend option for the last data file, InnoDB extends the data file if it runs out of free space in the tablespace. The increment is 8MB at a time.

If the disk becomes full, you might want to add another data file on another disk. Instructions for reconfiguring an existing tablespace are given in Section 15.7, “Adding and Removing InnoDB Data and Log Files”.

InnoDB is not aware of the maximum file size, so be cautious on filesystems where the maximum file size is 2GB. To specify a maximum size for an auto-extending data file, use the max attribute. The following configuration allows ibdata1 to grow up to a limit of 500MB:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_file_path=ibdata1:10M:autoextend:max:500M

InnoDB creates tablespace files in the MySQL data directory by default. To specify a location explicitly, use the innodb_data_home_dir option. For example, to use two files named ibdata1 and ibdata2 but create them in the /ibdata directory, configure InnoDB like this:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_home_dir = /ibdata
innodb_data_file_path=ibdata1:50M;ibdata2:50M:autoextend

Note: InnoDB does not create directories, so make sure that the /ibdata directory exists before you start the server. This is also true of any log file directories that you configure. Use the Unix or DOS mkdir command to create any necessary directories.

InnoDB forms the directory path for each data file by textually concatenating the value of innodb_data_home_dir to the data file name, adding a slash or backslash between if needed. If the innodb_data_home_dir option is not mentioned in my.cnf at all, the default value is the “dot” directory ./, which means the MySQL data directory.

If you specify innodb_data_home_dir as an empty string, you can specify absolute paths for the data files listed in the innodb_data_file_path value. The following example is equivalent to the preceding one:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_home_dir =
innodb_data_file_path=/ibdata/ibdata1:50M;/ibdata/ibdata2:50M:autoextend

A simple my.cnf example. Suppose that you have a computer with 128MB RAM and one hard disk. The following example shows possible configuration parameters in my.cnf or my.ini for InnoDB, including the autoextend attribute.

This example suits most users, both on Unix and Windows, who do not want to distribute InnoDB data files and log files on several disks. It creates an auto-extending data file ibdata1 and two InnoDB log files ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 in the MySQL data directory. Also, the small archived InnoDB log file ib_arch_log_0000000000 that InnoDB creates automatically ends up in the data directory.

[mysqld]
# You can write your other MySQL server options here
# ...
# Data files must be able to hold your data and indexes.
# Make sure that you have enough free disk space.
innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend
#
# Set buffer pool size to 50-80% of your computer's memory
set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=70M
set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=10M
#
# Set the log file size to about 25% of the buffer pool size
set-variable = innodb_log_file_size=20M
set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=8M
#
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1

Make sure that the MySQL server has the proper access rights to create files in the data directory. More generally, the server must have access rights in any directory where it needs to create data files or log files.

Note that data files must be less than 2GB in some filesystems. The combined size of the log files must be less than 4GB. The combined size of data files must be at least 10MB.

When you create an InnoDB tablespace for the first time, it is best that you start the MySQL server from the command prompt. InnoDB then prints the information about the database creation to the screen, so you can see what is happening. For example, on Windows, if mysqld-max is located in C:\mysql\bin, you can start it like this:

C:\> C:\mysql\bin\mysqld-max --console

If you do not send server output to the screen, check the server's error log to see what InnoDB prints during the startup process.

See Section 15.5, “Creating the InnoDB Tablespace” for an example of what the information displayed by InnoDB should look like.

Where to specify options on Windows? The rules for option files on Windows are as follows:

  • Only one of my.cnf or my.ini should be created.

  • The my.cnf file should be placed in the root directory of the C: drive.

  • The my.ini file should be placed in the WINDIR directory; for example, C:\WINDOWS or C:\WINNT. You can use the SET command at the command prompt in a console window to print the value of WINDIR:

    C:\> SET WINDIR
    windir=C:\WINNT
    
  • If your PC uses a boot loader where the C: drive is not the boot drive, your only option is to use the my.ini file.

  • If you installed MySQL using the installation and configuration wizards, the my.ini file is located in your MySQL installation directory. See Section 2.3.5.14, “The Location of the my.ini File”.

Where to specify options on Unix? On Unix, mysqld reads options from the following files, if they exist, in the following order:

  • /etc/my.cnf

    Global options.

  • $MYSQL_HOME/my.cnf

    Server-specific options.

  • defaults-extra-file

    The file specified with the --defaults-extra-file option.

  • ~/.my.cnf

    User-specific options.

MYSQL_HOME represents an environment variable, which contains a path to the directory containing the server-specific my.cnf file.

If you want to make sure that mysqld reads options only from a specific file, you can use the --defaults-option as the first option on the command line when starting the server:

mysqld --defaults-file=your_path_to_my_cnf

An advanced my.cnf example. Suppose that you have a Linux computer with 2GB RAM and three 60GB hard disks (at directory paths /, /dr2 and /dr3). The following example shows possible configuration parameters in my.cnf for InnoDB.

[mysqld]
# You can write your other MySQL server options here
# ...
innodb_data_home_dir =
#
# Data files must be able to hold your data and indexes
innodb_data_file_path = /ibdata/ibdata1:2000M;/dr2/ibdata/ibdata2:2000M:autoextend
#
# Set buffer pool size to 50-80% of your computer's memory,
# but make sure on Linux x86 total memory usage is < 2GB
innodb_buffer_pool_size=1G
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=20M
innodb_log_group_home_dir = /dr3/iblogs
#
innodb_log_files_in_group = 2
#
# Set the log file size to about 25% of the buffer pool size
innodb_log_file_size=250M
innodb_log_buffer_size=8M
#
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
innodb_lock_wait_timeout=50
#
# Uncomment the next lines if you want to use them
#innodb_thread_concurrency=5

Note that the example places the two data files on different disks. InnoDB fills the tablespace beginning with the first data file. In some cases, it improves the performance of the database if all data is not placed on the same physical disk. Putting log files on a different disk from data is very often beneficial for performance. You can also use raw disk partitions (raw devices) as InnoDB data files, which may speed up I/O. See Section 15.14.2, “Using Raw Devices for the Tablespace”.

Warning: On 32-bit GNU/Linux x86, you must be careful not to set memory usage too high. glibc may allow the process heap to grow over thread stacks, which crashes your server. It is a risk if the value of the following expression is close to or exceeds 2GB:

innodb_buffer_pool_size
+ key_buffer_size
+ max_connections*(sort_buffer_size+read_buffer_size+binlog_cache_size)
+ max_connections*2MB

Each thread uses a stack (often 2MB, but only 256KB in MySQL AB binaries) and in the worst case also uses sort_buffer_size + read_buffer_size additional memory.

By compiling MySQL yourself, you can use up to 64GB of physical memory in 32-bit Windows. See the description for innodb_buffer_pool_awe_mem_mb in Section 15.4, “InnoDB Startup Options”.

How to tune other mysqld server parameters? The following values are typical and suit most users:

[mysqld]
skip-external-locking
max_connections=200
read_buffer_size=1M
sort_buffer_size=1M
#
# Set key_buffer to 5 - 50% of your RAM depending on how much
# you use MyISAM tables, but keep key_buffer_size + InnoDB
# buffer pool size < 80% of your RAM
key_buffer_size=value

15.4. InnoDB Startup Options

This section describes the InnoDB-related server options. In MySQL 5.0, all of them can be specified in --opt_name=value form on the command line or in option files.

  • innodb_additional_mem_pool_size

    The size of a memory pool InnoDB uses to store data dictionary information and other internal data structures. The more tables you have in your application, the more memory you need to allocate here. If InnoDB runs out of memory in this pool, it starts to allocate memory from the operating system, and writes warning messages to the MySQL error log. The default value is 1MB.

  • innodb_autoextend_increment

    The increment size (in megabytes) for extending the size of an autoextending tablespace when it becomes full. The default value is 8. This option can be changed at runtime as a global system variable.

  • innodb_buffer_pool_awe_mem_mb

    The size of the buffer pool (in MB), if it is placed in the AWE memory of 32-bit Windows. (Relevant only in 32-bit Windows.) If your 32-bit Windows operating system supports more than 4GB memory, using so-called “Address Windowing Extensions”, you can allocate the InnoDB buffer pool into the AWE physical memory using this parameter. The maximum possible value for this is 64000. If this parameter is specified, innodb_buffer_pool_size is the window in the 32-bit address space of mysqld where InnoDB maps that AWE memory. A good value for innodb_buffer_pool_size is 500MB.

  • innodb_buffer_pool_size

    The size of the memory buffer InnoDB uses to cache data and indexes of its tables. The larger you set this value, the less disk I/O is needed to access data in tables. On a dedicated database server, you may set this to up to 80% of the machine physical memory size. However, do not set it too large because competition for the physical memory might cause paging in the operating system.

  • innodb_checksums

    InnoDB uses checksum validation on all pages read from the disk to ensure extra fault tolerance against broken hardware or data files. However, under some rare circumstances (such as when running benchmarks) this extra safety feature is unneeded. In such cases, this option (which is enabled by default) can be turned off with --skip-innodb-checksums. This option was added in MySQL 5.0.3.

  • innodb_data_file_path

    The paths to individual data files and their sizes. The full directory path to each data file is acquired by concatenating innodb_data_home_dir to each path specified here. The file sizes are specified in megabytes or gigabytes (1024MB) by appending M or G to the size value. The sum of the sizes of the files must be at least 10MB. On some operating systems, files must be less than 2GB. If you do not specify innodb_data_file_path, the default behavior starting is to create a single 10MB auto-extending data file named ibdata1. You can set the file size to more than 4GB on those operating systems supporting big files. You can also use raw disk partitions as data files. See Section 15.14.2, “Using Raw Devices for the Tablespace”.

  • innodb_data_home_dir

    The common part of the directory path for all InnoDB data files. If you do not set this value, the default is the MySQL data directory. You can specify this also as an empty string, in which case you can use absolute file paths in innodb_data_file_path.

  • innodb_doublewrite

    By default, InnoDB stores all data twice, first to the doublewrite buffer, and then to the actual data files. This option can be used to disable this functionality. Like innodb_checksums, this option is enabled by default; it can be turned off with --skip-innodb-doublewrite for benchmarks or cases when top performance is needed rather than concern for data integrity or possible failures. This option was added in MySQL 5.0.3.

  • innodb_fast_shutdown

    If you set this to 0, InnoDB does a full purge and an insert buffer merge before a shutdown. These operations can take minutes, or even hours in extreme cases. If you set this parameter to 1, InnoDB skips these operations at shutdown. The default value is 1. If you set it to 2 (available starting from MySQL 5.0.5, except on Netware), InnoDB will just flush its logs and then shut down cold, as if MySQL had crashed; no committed transaction will be lost, but a crash recovery will be done at next startup.

  • innodb_file_io_threads

    The number of file I/O threads in InnoDB. Normally this should be left at the default value of 4, but disk I/O on Windows may benefit from a larger number. On Unix, increasing the number has no effect; InnoDB always uses the default value.

  • innodb_file_per_table

    This option causes InnoDB to create each new table using its own .ibd file for storing data and indexes, rather than in the shared tablespace. See Section 15.6.6, “Using Per-Table Tablespaces”.

  • innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit

    When innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit is set to 0, once per second the log buffer is written out to the log file, and the flush to disk operation is performed on the log file, but nothing is done at a transaction commit. When this value is 1 (the default), at each transaction commit the log buffer is written out to the log file, and the flush to disk operation is performed on the log file. When set to 2, at each commit the log buffer is written out to the file, but the flush to disk operation is not performed on it. However, the flushing on the log file takes place once per second also in the case of 2. We must note that the once-per-second flushing is not 100% guaranteed to happen every second, due to process scheduling issues. You can achieve better performance by setting the value different from 1, but then you can lose at most one second worth of transactions in a crash. If you set the value to 0, then any mysqld process crash can erase the last second of transactions. If you set the value to 2, then only an operating system crash or a power outage can erase the last second of transactions. However, InnoDB's crash recovery is not affected and thus crash recovery does work regardless of the value. Note that many operating systems and some disk hardware fool the flush-to-disk operation. They may tell mysqld that the flush has taken place, though it has not. Then the durability of transactions is not guaranteed even with the setting 1, and in the worst case a power outage can even corrupt the InnoDB database. Using a battery-backed disk cache in the SCSI disk controller or in the disk itself speeds up file flushes, and makes the operation safer. You can also try using the Unix command hdparm to disable the caching of disk writes in hardware caches, or use some other command specific to the hardware vendor. The default value of this option is 1.

  • innodb_flush_method

    This option is relevant only on Unix systems. If set to fdatasync (the default), InnoDB uses fsync() to flush both the data and log files. If set to O_DSYNC, InnoDB uses O_SYNC to open and flush the log files, but uses fsync() to flush the data files. If O_DIRECT is specified (available on some GNU/Linux versions), InnoDB uses O_DIRECT to open the data files, and uses fsync() to flush both the data and log files. Note that InnoDB uses fsync() instead of fdatasync(), and it does not use O_DSYNC by default because there have been problems with this on many varieties of Unix.

  • innodb_force_recovery

    Warning: This option should be defined only in an emergency situation when you want to dump your tables from a corrupt database! Possible values are from 1 to 6. The meanings of these values are described in Section 15.8.1, “Forcing Recovery”. As a safety measure, InnoDB prevents a user from modifying data when this option is greater than 0.

  • innodb_lock_wait_timeout

    The timeout in seconds an InnoDB transaction may wait for a lock before being rolled back. InnoDB automatically detects transaction deadlocks in its own lock table and rolls back the transaction. InnoDB notices locks set using the LOCK TABLES statement. The default is 50 seconds.

    For the greatest possible durability and consistency in a replication setup you should use innodb_flush_logs_at_trx_commit=1, sync-binlog=1, and, before MySQL 5.0.3, innodb_safe_binlog in your master my.cnf file. (innodb_safe_binlog is not needed from 5.0.3 on.)

  • innodb_locks_unsafe_for_binlog

    This option turns off next-key locking in InnoDB searches and index scans. Default value for this option is false.

    Normally InnoDB uses an algorithm called next-key locking . InnoDB performs row-level locking in such a way that when it searches or scans a table index, it sets shared or exclusive locks on any index records it encounters. Thus, the row-level locks are actually index record locks. The locks that InnoDB sets on index records also affect the “gap” preceeding that index record. If a user has a shared or exclusive lock on record R in an index, another user cannot insert a new index record immediately before R in the order of the index. This option causes InnoDB not to use next-key locking in searches or index scans. Next-key locking is still used to ensure foreign key constraints and duplicate key checking. Note that using this option may cause phantom problems: Suppose that you want to read and lock all children from the child table with an identifier value larger than 100, with the intention of updating some column in the selected rows later:

    SELECT * FROM child WHERE id > 100 FOR UPDATE;
    

    Suppose that there is an index on the id column. The query scans that index starting from the first record where id is greater than 100. If the locks set on the index records do not lock out inserts made in the gaps, a new row is meanwhile inserted into the table. If you execute the same SELECT within the same transaction, you see a new row in the result set returned by the query. This also means, that if new items are added to the database, InnoDB does not guarantee serializability; however, conflict serializability is still guaranteed. Therefore, if this option is used InnoDB guarantees at most isolation level READ COMMITTED.

    Starting from MySQL 5.0.2 this option is even more unsafe. InnoDB in an UPDATE or a DELETE only locks rows that it updates or deletes. This greatly reduces the probability of deadlocks but they can happen. Note that this option still does not allow operations such as UPDATE to overtake like operations (such as another UPDATE) even in the case when they affect different rows. Consider the following example:

    CREATE TABLE A(A INT NOT NULL, B INT);
    INSERT INTO A VALUES (1,2),(2,3),(3,2),(4,3),(5,2);
    COMMIT;
    

    If one connection executes a query:

    SET AUTOCOMMIT = 0;
    UPDATE A SET B = 5 WHERE B = 3;
    

    and the other connection executes, following the first one, another query:

    SET AUTOCOMMIT = 0;
    UPDATE A SET B = 4 WHERE B = 2;
    

    Then query two has to wait for a commit or rollback of query one, because query one has an exclusive lock to row (2,3), and query two while scanning rows also tries to take an exclusive lock to the same row (2,3), which it cannot have. This is because query two first takes an exclusive lock on a row and then determines whether this row belongs to the result set, and if not then releases the unnecessary lock, when the option innodb_locks_unsafe_for_binlog is used.

    Therefore, query one is executed as follows:

    x-lock(1,2)
    unlock(1,2)
    x-lock(2,3)
    update(2,3) to (2,5)
    x-lock(3,2)
    unlock(3,2)
    x-lock(4,3)
    update(4,3) to (4,5)
    x-lock(5,2)
    unlock(5,2)
    

    and then query two is executed as follows:

    x-lock(1,2)
    update(1,2) to (1,4)
    x-lock(2,3) - wait for query one to commit or rollback
    
  • innodb_log_arch_dir

    The directory where fully written log files would be archived if we used log archiving. If used, the value of this parameter should be set the same as innodb_log_group_home_dir. However, it is not required.

  • innodb_log_archive

    This value should currently be set to 0. Because recovery from a backup is done by MySQL using its own log files, there is currently no need to archive InnoDB log files. The default for this option is 0.

  • innodb_log_buffer_size

    The size of the buffer that InnoDB uses to write to the log files on disk. Sensible values range from 1MB to 8MB. The default is 1MB. A large log buffer allows large transactions to run without a need to write the log to disk before the transactions commit. Thus, if you have big transactions, making the log buffer larger saves disk I/O.

  • innodb_log_file_size

    The size of each log file in a log group. The combined size of log files must be less than 4GB on 32-bit computers. The default is 5MB. Sensible values range from 1MB to 1/N-th of the size of the buffer pool, below, where N is the number of log files in the group. The larger the value, the less checkpoint flush activity is needed in the buffer pool, saving disk I/O. But larger log files also mean that recovery is slower in case of a crash.

  • innodb_log_files_in_group

    The number of log files in the log group. InnoDB writes to the files in a circular fashion. The default is 2 (recommended).

  • innodb_log_group_home_dir

    The directory path to the InnoDB log files. It must have the same value as innodb_log_arch_dir. If you do not specify any InnoDB log parameters, the default is to create two 5MB files names ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 in the MySQL data directory.

  • innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct

    This is an integer in the range from 0 to 100. The default is 90. The main thread in InnoDB tries to write pages from the buffer pool so that the percentage of dirty (not yet written) pages will not exceed this value. If you have the SUPER privilege, this percentage can be changed while the server is running:

    SET GLOBAL innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct = value;
    
  • innodb_max_purge_lag

    This option controls how to delay INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE operations when the purge operations (see Section 15.12, “Implementation of Multi-Versioning”) are lagging. The default value of this parameter is zero, meaning that there are no delays. This option can be changed at runtime as a global system variable.

    The InnoDB transaction system maintains a list of transactions that have delete-marked index records by UPDATE or DELETE operations. Let the length of this list be purge_lag. When purge_lag exceeds innodb_max_purge_lag, each INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE operation is delayed by ((purge_lag/innodb_max_purge_lag)*10)-5 milliseconds. The delay is computed in the beginning of a purge batch, every ten seconds. The operations are not delayed if purge cannot run because of an old consistent read view that could see the rows to be purged.

    A typical setting for a problematic workload might be 1 million, assuming that our transactions are small, only 100 bytes in size, and we can allow 100 MB of unpurged rows in our tables.

  • innodb_mirrored_log_groups

    The number of identical copies of log groups we keep for the database. Currently this should be set to 1.

  • innodb_open_files

    This option is relevant only if you use multiple tablespaces in InnoDB. It specifies the maximum number of .ibd files that InnoDB can keep open at one time. The minimum value is 10. The default is 300.

    The file descriptors used for .ibd files are for InnoDB only. They are independent of those specified by the --open-files-limit server option, and do not affect the operation of the table cache.

  • innodb_safe_binlog

    Adds consistency guarantees between the content of InnoDB tables and the binary log. See Section 5.11.3, “The Binary Log”. This variable was removed in MySQL 5.0.3, having been made obsolete by the introduction of XA transaction support.

  • innodb_status_file

    This option causes InnoDB to create a file <datadir>/innodb_status.<pid> for periodical SHOW INNODB STATUS output.

  • innodb_support_xa

    When set to ON or 1 (the default), this variable enables InnoDB support for two-phase commit in XA transactions. Enabling innodb_support_xa causes an extra disk flush for transaction preparation. If you don't care about using XA, you can disable this variable by setting it to OFF or 0 to reduce the number of disk flushes and get better InnoDB performance. This variable was added in MySQL 5.0.3.

  • innodb_table_locks

    InnoDB honors LOCK TABLES; MySQL does not return from LOCK TABLE .. WRITE until all other threads have released all their locks to the table. The default value is 1, which means that LOCK TABLES causes InnoDB to lock a table internally. In applications using AUTOCOMMIT=1, InnoDB's internal table locks can cause deadlocks. You can set innodb_table_locks=0 in my.cnf (or my.ini on Windows) to remove that problem.

  • innodb_thread_concurrency

    InnoDB tries to keep the number of operating system threads concurrently inside InnoDB less than or equal to the limit given by this parameter. Before MySQL 5.0.8, the default value is 8. If you have performance issues, and SHOW INNODB STATUS reveals many threads waiting for semaphores, you may have thread “thrashing” and should try setting this parameter lower or higher. If you have a computer with many processors and disks, you can try setting the value higher to make better use of your computer's resources. A recommended value is the sum of the number of processors and disks your system has. A value of 500 or greater disables concurrency checking. Starting with MySQL 5.0.8, the default value is 20, and concurrency checking will be disabled if the setting is greater than or equal to 20.

  • innodb_status_file

    This option causes InnoDB to create a file <datadir>/innodb_status.<pid> for periodic SHOW INNODB STATUS output.

15.5. Creating the InnoDB Tablespace

Suppose that you have installed MySQL and have edited your option file so that it contains the necessary InnoDB configuration parameters. Before starting MySQL, you should verify that the directories you have specified for InnoDB data files and log files exist and that the MySQL server has access rights to those directories. InnoDB cannot create directories, only files. Check also that you have enough disk space for the data and log files.

It is best to run the MySQL server mysqld from the command prompt when you create an InnoDB database, not from the mysqld_safe wrapper or as a Windows service. When you run from a command prompt you see what mysqld prints and what is happening. On Unix, just invoke mysqld. On Windows, use the --console option.

When you start the MySQL server after initially configuring InnoDB in your option file, InnoDB creates your data files and log files. InnoDB prints something like the following:

InnoDB: The first specified datafile /home/heikki/data/ibdata1
did not exist:
InnoDB: a new database to be created!
InnoDB: Setting file /home/heikki/data/ibdata1 size to 134217728
InnoDB: Database physically writes the file full: wait...
InnoDB: datafile /home/heikki/data/ibdata2 did not exist:
new to be created
InnoDB: Setting file /home/heikki/data/ibdata2 size to 262144000
InnoDB: Database physically writes the file full: wait...
InnoDB: Log file /home/heikki/data/logs/ib_logfile0 did not exist:
new to be created
InnoDB: Setting log file /home/heikki/data/logs/ib_logfile0 size
to 5242880
InnoDB: Log file /home/heikki/data/logs/ib_logfile1 did not exist:
new to be created
InnoDB: Setting log file /home/heikki/data/logs/ib_logfile1 size
to 5242880
InnoDB: Doublewrite buffer not found: creating new
InnoDB: Doublewrite buffer created
InnoDB: Creating foreign key constraint system tables
InnoDB: Foreign key constraint system tables created
InnoDB: Started
mysqld: ready for connections

A new InnoDB database has been created. You can connect to the MySQL server with the usual MySQL client programs like mysql. When you shut down the MySQL server with mysqladmin shutdown, the output is like the following:

010321 18:33:34  mysqld: Normal shutdown
010321 18:33:34  mysqld: Shutdown Complete
InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
InnoDB: Shutdown completed

You can look at the data file and log directories and you see the files created. The log directory also contains a small file named ib_arch_log_0000000000. That file resulted from the database creation, after which InnoDB switched off log archiving. When MySQL is started again, the data files and log files have been created, so the output is much briefer:

InnoDB: Started
mysqld: ready for connections

You can add the option innodb_file_per_table to my.cnf, and make InnoDB to store each table into its own .ibd file in a database directory of MySQL. See Section 15.6.6, “Using Per-Table Tablespaces”.

15.5.1. Dealing with InnoDB Initialization Problems

If InnoDB prints an operating system error in a file operation, usually the problem is one of the following:

  • You did not create the InnoDB data file directory or the InnoDB log directory.

  • mysqld does not have access rights to create files in those directories.

  • mysqld cannot not read the proper my.cnf or my.ini option file, and consequently does not see the options you specified.

  • The disk is full or a disk quota is exceeded.

  • You have created a subdirectory whose name is equal to a data file you specified.

  • There is a syntax error in innodb_data_home_dir or innodb_data_file_path.

If something goes wrong when InnoDB attempts to initialize its tablespace or its log files, you should delete all files created by InnoDB. This means all ibdata files and all ib_logfiles. In case you created some InnoDB tables, delete the corresponding .frm files for these tables (and any .ibd files if you are using multiple tablespaces) from the MySQL database directories as well. Then you can try the InnoDB database creation again. It is best to start the MySQL server from a command prompt so that you see what is happening.

15.6. Creating InnoDB Tables

Suppose that you have started the MySQL client with the command mysql test. To create an InnoDB table, you must specify an ENGINE = InnoDB or TYPE = InnoDB option in the table creation SQL statement:

CREATE TABLE customers (a INT, b CHAR (20), INDEX (a)) ENGINE=InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE customers (a INT, b CHAR (20), INDEX (a)) TYPE=InnoDB;

The SQL statement creates a table and an index on column a in the InnoDB tablespace that consists of the data files you specified in my.cnf. In addition, MySQL creates a file customers.frm in the test directory under the MySQL database directory. Internally, InnoDB adds to its own data dictionary an entry for table 'test/customers'. This means you can create a table of the same name customers in some other database, and the table names do not collide inside InnoDB.

You can query the amount of free space in the InnoDB tablespace by issuing a SHOW TABLE STATUS statement for any InnoDB table. The amount of free space in the tablespace appears in the Comment section in the output of SHOW TABLE STATUS. An example:

SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM test LIKE 'customers'

Note that the statistics SHOW gives about InnoDB tables are only approximate. They are used in SQL optimization. Table and index reserved sizes in bytes are accurate, though.

15.6.1. How to Use Transactions in InnoDB with Different APIs

By default, each client that connects to the MySQL server begins with autocommit mode enabled, which automatically commits every SQL statement you run. To use multiple-statement transactions, you can switch autocommit off with the SQL statement SET AUTOCOMMIT = 0 and use COMMIT and ROLLBACK to commit or roll back your transaction. If you want to leave autocommit on, you can enclose your transactions between START TRANSACTION and COMMIT or ROLLBACK. The following example shows two transactions. The first is committed; the second is rolled back.

shell> mysql test
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 5 to server version: 3.23.50-log
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql> CREATE TABLE CUSTOMER (A INT, B CHAR (20), INDEX (A))
    -> ENGINE=InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> BEGIN;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO CUSTOMER VALUES (10, 'Heikki');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> COMMIT;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SET AUTOCOMMIT=0;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO CUSTOMER VALUES (15, 'John');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> ROLLBACK;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMER;
+------+--------+
| A    | B      |
+------+--------+
|   10 | Heikki |
+------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>

In APIs like PHP, Perl DBI/DBD, JDBC, ODBC, or the standard C call interface of MySQL, you can send transaction control statements such as COMMIT to the MySQL server as strings just like any other SQL statements such as SELECT or INSERT. Some APIs also offer separate special transaction commit and rollback functions or methods.

15.6.2. Converting MyISAM Tables to InnoDB

Important: You should not convert MySQL system tables in the mysql database (such as user or host) to the InnoDB type. The system tables must always be of the MyISAM type.

If you want all your (non-system) tables to be created as InnoDB tables, you can simply add the line default-table-type=innodb to the [mysqld] section of your my.cnf or my.ini file.

InnoDB does not have a special optimization for separate index creation the way the MyISAM storage engine does. Therefore, it does not pay to export and import the table and create indexes afterward. The fastest way to alter a table to InnoDB is to do the inserts directly to an InnoDB table. That is, use ALTER TABLE ... ENGINE=INNODB, or create an empty InnoDB table with identical definitions and insert the rows with INSERT INTO ... SELECT * FROM ....

If you have UNIQUE constraints on secondary keys, you can speed up a table import by turning off the uniqueness checks temporarily during the import session: SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=0;. For big tables, this saves a lot of disk I/O because InnoDB can then use its insert buffer to write secondary index records as a batch.

To get better control over the insertion process, it might be good to insert big tables in pieces:

INSERT INTO newtable SELECT * FROM oldtable
   WHERE yourkey > something AND yourkey <= somethingelse;

After all records have been inserted, you can rename the tables.

During the conversion of big tables, you should increase the size of the InnoDB buffer pool to reduce disk I/O. Do not use more than 80% of the physical memory, though. You can also increase the sizes of the InnoDB log files and the log files.

Make sure that you do not fill up the tablespace: InnoDB tables require a lot more disk space than MyISAM tables. If an ALTER TABLE runs out of space, it starts a rollback, and that can take hours if it is disk-bound. For inserts, InnoDB uses the insert buffer to merge secondary index records to indexes in batches. That saves a lot of disk I/O. In rollback, no such mechanism is used, and the rollback can take 30 times longer than the insertion.

In the case of a runaway rollback, if you do not have valuable data in your database, it may be advisable to kill the database process rather than wait for millions of disk I/O operations to complete. For the complete procedure, see Section 15.8.1, “Forcing Recovery”.

15.6.3. How an AUTO_INCREMENT Column Works in InnoDB

If you specify an AUTO_INCREMENT column for a table, the InnoDB table handle in the data dictionary contains a special counter called the auto-increment counter that is used in assigning new values for the column. The auto-increment counter is stored only in main memory, not on disk.

InnoDB uses the following algorithm to initialize the auto-increment counter for a table T that contains an AUTO_INCREMENT column named ai_col: After a server startup, when a user first does an insert to a table T, InnoDB executes the equivalent of this statement:

SELECT MAX(ai_col) FROM T FOR UPDATE;

The value retrieved by the statement is incremented by one and assigned to the column and the auto-increment counter of the table. If the table is empty, the value 1 is assigned. If the auto-increment counter is not initialized and the user invokes a SHOW TABLE STATUS statement that displays output for the table T, the counter is initialized (but not incremented) and stored for use by later inserts. Note that in this initialization we do a normal exclusive-locking read on the table and the lock lasts to the end of the transaction.

InnoDB follows the same procedure for initializing the auto-increment counter for a freshly created table.

Note that if the user specifies NULL or 0 for the AUTO_INCREMENT column in an INSERT, InnoDB treats the row as if the value had not been specified and generates a new value for it.

After the auto-increment counter has been initialized, if a user inserts a row that explicitly specifies the column value, and the value is bigger than the current counter value, the counter is set to the specified column value. If the user does not explicitly specify a value, InnoDB increments the counter by one and assigns the new value to the column.

When accessing the auto-increment counter, InnoDB uses a special table level AUTO-INC lock that it keeps to the end of the current SQL statement, not to the end of the transaction. The special lock release strategy was introduced to improve concurrency for inserts into a table containing an AUTO_INCREMENT column. Two transactions cannot have the AUTO-INC lock on the same table simultaneously.

Note that you may see gaps in the sequence of values assigned to the AUTO_INCREMENT column if you roll back transactions that have gotten numbers from the counter.

The behavior of the auto-increment mechanism is not defined if a user assigns a negative value to the column or if the value becomes bigger than the maximum integer that can be stored in the specified integer type.

Beginning with MySQL 5.0.3, InnoDB supports the AUTO_INCREMENT = n table option in CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE statements, to set the initial counter value or alter the current counter value. The effect of this option is canceled by a server restart, for reasons discussed earlier in this section.

15.6.4. FOREIGN KEY Constraints

InnoDB also supports foreign key constraints. The syntax for a foreign key constraint definition in InnoDB looks like this:

[CONSTRAINT symbol] FOREIGN KEY [id] (index_col_name, ...)
    REFERENCES tbl_name (index_col_name, ...)
    [ON DELETE {RESTRICT | CASCADE | SET NULL | NO ACTION}]
    [ON UPDATE {RESTRICT | CASCADE | SET NULL | NO ACTION}]

Foreign keys definitions are subject to the following conditions:

  • Both tables must be InnoDB type and they must not be temporary tables.

  • In the referencing table, there must be an index where the foreign key columns are listed as the first columns in the same order. Such an index will be created on the referencing table automatically if it does not exist.

  • In the referenced table, there must be an index where the referenced columns are listed as the first columns in the same order.

  • Index prefixes on foreign key columns are not supported. One consequence of this is that BLOB and TEXT columns cannot be included in a foreign key, because indexes on those columns must always include a prefix length.

  • If the CONSTRAINTsymbol is given, it must be unique in the database. If it is not given, InnoDB creates the name automatically.

InnoDB rejects any INSERT or UPDATE operation that attempts to create a foreign key value in a child table without a matching candidate key value in the parent table. The action InnoDB takes for any UPDATE or DELETE operation that attempts to update or delete a candidate key value in the parent table that has some matching rows in the child table is dependent on the referential action specified using ON UPDATE and ON DETETE subclauses of the FOREIGN KEY clause. When the user attempts to delete or update a row from a parent table, and there are one or more matching rows in the child table, InnoDB supports five options regarding the action to be taken:

  • CASCADE: Delete or update the row from the parent table and automatically delete or update the matching rows in the child table. Both ON DELETE CASCADE and ON UPDATE CASCADE are available in MySQL 5.0. Between two tables, you should not define several ON UPDATE CASCADE clauses that act on the same column in the parent table or in the child table.

  • SET NULL: Delete or update the row from the parent table and set the foreign key column(s) in the child table to NULL. This is only valid if the foreign key columns do not have the NOT NULL qualifier specified. MySQL 5.0 supports both ON DELETE SET NULL and ON UPDATE SET NULL clauses.

  • NO ACTION: In ANSI SQL-92 standard, NO ACTION means no action in the sense that an attempt to delete or update a primary key value will not be allowed to proceed if there is a related foreign key value in the referenced table (Gruber, Mastering SQL, 2000:181). In MySQL 5.0, InnoDB rejects the delete or update operation for the parent table.

  • RESTRICT: Rejects the delete or update operation for the parent table. NO ACTION and RESTRICT are the same as omitting the ON DELETE or ON UPDATE clause. (Some database systems have deferred checks, and NO ACTION is a deferred check. In MySQL, foreign key constraints are checked immediately, so NO ACTION and RESTRICT are the same.)

  • SET DEFAULT: This action is recognized by the parser, but InnoDB rejects table definitions containing ON DELETE SET DEFAULT or ON UPDATE SET DEFAULT clauses.

InnoDB supports the same options when the candidate key in the parent table is updated. With CASCADE, the foreign key column(s) in the child table are set to new value(s) of the candidate key in the parent table. In the same way, the updates cascade if updated column(s) in the child table reference foreign keys in another table.

Note that InnoDB supports foreign key references within a table and in these cases child table really means dependent records within the table.

InnoDB needs indexes on foreign keys and referenced keys so that foreign key checks can be fast and not require a table scan. In MySQL 5.0, the index on the foreign key is created automatically. This is in contrast to some older versions, in which indexes had to be created explicitly or the creation of foreign key constraints would fail.

Corresponding columns in the foreign key and the referenced key must have similar internal data types inside InnoDB so that they can be compared without a type conversion. The size and sign of integer types must be the same. The length of string types need not be the same. If you specify a SET NULL action, make sure that you have not declared the columns in the child table as NOT NULL.

If MySQL reports an error number 1005 from a CREATE TABLE statement, and the error message string refers to errno 150, this means that the table creation failed because a foreign key constraint was not correctly formed. Similarly, if an ALTER TABLE fails and it refers to errno 150, that means a foreign key definition would be incorrectly formed for the altered table. In MySQL 5.0, you can use SHOW INNODB STATUS to display a detailed explanation of the most recent InnoDB foreign key error in the server.

Note: InnoDB does not check foreign key constraints on those foreign key or referenced key values that contain a NULL column.

Deviation from SQL standards: If in the parent table there are several rows that have the same referenced key value, then InnoDB acts in foreign key checks as if the other parent rows with the same key value do not exist. For example, if you have defined a RESTRICT type constraint, and there is a child row with several parent rows, InnoDB does not allow the deletion of any of those parent rows.

InnoDB performs cascading operations through a depth-first algorithm, based on records in the indexes corresponding to the foreign key constraints.

Deviation from SQL standards: If ON UPDATE CASCADE or ON UPDATE SET NULL recurses to update the same table it has previously updated during the cascade, it acts like RESTRICT. This means that you cannot use self-referential ON UPDATE CASCADE or ON UPDATE SET NULL operations. This is to prevent infinite loops resulting from cascaded updates. A self-referential ON DELETE SET NULL, on the other hand, is possible, as is a self-referential ON DELETE CASCADE. In MySQL 5.0, cascading operations may not be nested more than 15 levels deep.

Deviation from SQL standards: Like MySQL in general, in an SQL statement that inserts, deletes, or updates many rows, InnoDB checks UNIQUE and FOREIGN KEY constraints row-by-row. According to the SQL standard, the default behavior should be deferred checking, that is, constraints are only checked after the entire SQL statement has been processed. Until InnoDB implements deferred constraint checking, some things will be impossible, such as deleting a record that refers to itself via a foreign key.

Note: Currently, triggers are not activated by cascaded foreign key actions.

A simple example that relates parent and child tables through a single-column foreign key:

CREATE TABLE parent(id INT NOT NULL,
                    PRIMARY KEY (id)
) TYPE=INNODB;
CREATE TABLE child(id INT, parent_id INT,
                   INDEX par_ind (parent_id),
                   FOREIGN KEY (parent_id) REFERENCES parent(id)
                     ON DELETE CASCADE
) TYPE=INNODB;

A more complex example in which a product_order table has foreign keys for two other tables. One foreign key references a two-column index in the product table. The other references a single-column index in the customer table:

CREATE TABLE product (category INT NOT NULL, id INT NOT NULL,
                      price DECIMAL,
                      PRIMARY KEY(category, id)) TYPE=INNODB;
CREATE TABLE customer (id INT NOT NULL,
                      PRIMARY KEY (id)) TYPE=INNODB;
CREATE TABLE product_order (no INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
                      product_category INT NOT NULL,
                      product_id INT NOT NULL,
                      customer_id INT NOT NULL,
                      PRIMARY KEY(no),
                      INDEX (product_category, product_id),
                      FOREIGN KEY (product_category, product_id)
                        REFERENCES product(category, id)
                        ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE RESTRICT,
                      INDEX (customer_id),
                      FOREIGN KEY (customer_id)
                        REFERENCES customer(id)) TYPE=INNODB;

InnoDB allows you to add a new foreign key constraint to a table by using ALTER TABLE:

ALTER TABLE yourtablename
    ADD [CONSTRAINT symbol] FOREIGN KEY [id] (index_col_name, ...)
    REFERENCES tbl_name (index_col_name, ...)
    [ON DELETE {RESTRICT | CASCADE | SET NULL | NO ACTION}]
    [ON UPDATE {RESTRICT | CASCADE | SET NULL | NO ACTION}]

Remember to create the required indexes first. You can also add a self-referential foreign key constraint to a table using ALTER TABLE.

InnoDB also supports the use of ALTER TABLE to drop foreign keys:

ALTER TABLE yourtablename DROP FOREIGN KEY fk_symbol;

If the FOREIGN KEY clause included a CONSTRAINT name when you created the foreign key, you can refer to that name to drop the foreign key. Otherwise, the fk_symbol value is internally generated by InnoDB when the foreign key is created. To find out the symbol when you want to drop a foreign key, use the SHOW CREATE TABLE statement. An example:

mysql> SHOW CREATE TABLE ibtest11c\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: ibtest11c
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `ibtest11c` (
  `A` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `D` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  `B` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
  `C` varchar(175) default NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`A`,`D`,`B`),
  KEY `B` (`B`,`C`),
  KEY `C` (`C`),
  CONSTRAINT `0_38775` FOREIGN KEY (`A`, `D`)
REFERENCES `ibtest11a` (`A`, `D`)
ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE,
  CONSTRAINT `0_38776` FOREIGN KEY (`B`, `C`)
REFERENCES `ibtest11a` (`B`, `C`)
ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE
) ENGINE=INNODB CHARSET=latin1
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> ALTER TABLE ibtest11c DROP FOREIGN KEY 0_38775;

The InnoDB parser allows you to use backticks around table and column names in a FOREIGN KEY ... REFERENCES ... clause. The InnoDB parser also takes into account the setting of the lower_case_table_names system variable.

InnoDB returns a table's foreign key definitions as part of the output of the SHOW CREATE TABLE statement:

SHOW CREATE TABLE tbl_name;

From this version, mysqldump also produces correct definitions of tables to the dump file, and does not forget about the foreign keys.

You can display the foreign key constraints for a table like this:

SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM db_name LIKE 'tbl_name';

The foreign key constraints are listed in the Comment column of the output.

When performing foreign key checks, InnoDB sets shared row-level locks on child or parent records it has to look at. InnoDB checks foreign key constraints immediately; the check is not deferred to transaction commit.

To make it easier to reload dump files for tables that have foreign key relationships, mysqldump automatically includes a statement in the dump output to set FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS to 0. This avoids problems with tables having to be reloaded in a particular order when the dump is reloaded. It is also possible to set this variable manually:

mysql> SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0;
mysql> SOURCE dump_file_name;
mysql> SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 1;

This allows you to import the tables in any order if the dump file contains tables that are not correctly ordered for foreign keys. It also speeds up the import operation. Setting FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS to 0 can also be useful for ignoring foreign key constraints during LOAD DATA and ALTER TABLE operations.

InnoDB does not allow you to drop a table that is referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint, unless you do SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0. When you drop a table, the constraints that were defined in its create statement are also dropped.

If you re-create a table that was dropped, it must have a definition that conforms to the foreign key constraints referencing it. It must have the right column names and types, and it must have indexes on the referenced keys, as stated earlier. If these are not satisfied, MySQL returns error number 1005 and refers to errno 150 in the error message string.

15.6.5. InnoDB and MySQL Replication

MySQL replication works for InnoDB tables as it does for MyISAM tables. It is also possible to use replication in a way where the table type on the slave is not the same as the original table type on the master. For example, you can replicate modifications to an InnoDB table on the master to a MyISAM table on the slave.

To set up a new slave for a master, you have to make a copy of the InnoDB tablespace and the log files, as well as the .frm files of the InnoDB tables, and move the copies to the slave. For the proper procedure to do this, see Section 15.9, “Moving an InnoDB Database to Another Machine”.

If you can shut down the master or an existing slave, you can take a cold backup of the InnoDB tablespace and log files and use that to set up a slave. To make a new slave without taking down any server you can also use the non-free (commercial) InnoDB Hot Backup tool.

One minor limitation in InnoDB replication is that LOAD TABLE FROM MASTER does not work for InnoDB type tables. There are two possible workarounds:

  • Dump the table on the master and import the dump file into the slave.

  • Use ALTER TABLE tbl_name TYPE=MyISAM on the master before setting up replication with LOAD TABLE tbl_name FROM MASTER, and then use ALTER TABLE to convert the master table back to InnoDB afterward.

Transactions that fail on the master do not affect replication at all. MySQL replication is based on the binary log where MySQL writes SQL statements that modify data. A slave reads the binary log of the master and executes the same SQL statements. However, statements that occur within a transaction are not written to the binary log until the transaction commits, at which point all statements in the transaction are written at once. If a statement fails, for example, because of a foreign key violation, or if a transaction is rolled back, no SQL statements are written to the binary log, and the transaction is not executed on the slave at all.

15.6.6. Using Per-Table Tablespaces

In MySQL 5.0, you can store each InnoDB table and its indexes in its own file. This feature is called “multiple tablespaces” because in effect each table has its own tablespace.

Using multiple tablespaces can be beneficial to users who want to move specific tables to separate physical disks or who wish to restore backups of single tables quickly without interrupting the use of the remaining InnoDB tables.

You can enable multiple tablespaces by adding this line to the [mysqld] section of my.cnf:

[mysqld]
innodb_file_per_table

After restarting the server, InnoDB stores each newly created table into its own file tbl_name.ibd in the database directory where the table belongs. This is similar to what the MyISAM storage engine does, but MyISAM divides the table into a data file tbl_name.MYD and the index file tbl_name.MYI. For InnoDB, the data and the indexes are stored together in the .ibd file. The tbl_name.frm file is still created as usual.

If you remove the innodb_file_per_table line from my.cnf and restart the server, InnoDB creates tables inside the shared tablespace files again.

innodb_file_per_table affects only table creation. If you start the server with this option, new tables are created using .ibd files, but you can still access tables that exist in the shared tablespace. If you remove the option, new tables are created in the shared tablespace, but you can still access any tables that were created using multiple tablespaces.

InnoDB always needs the shared tablespace. The .ibd files are not sufficient for InnoDB to operate. The shared tablespace consists of the familiar ibdata files where InnoDB puts its internal data dictionary and undo logs.

Note: You cannot freely move .ibd files between database directories as you can with MyISAM table files. This is because the table definition is stored in the InnoDB shared tablespace, and because InnoDB must preserve the consistency of transaction IDs and log sequence numbers.

Within a given MySQL installation, you can move an .ibd file and the associated table from one database to another with a RENAME TABLE statement:

RENAME TABLE old_db_name.tbl_name TO new_db_name.tbl_name;

If you have a “clean” backup of an .ibd file, you can restore it to the MySQL installation from which it originated as follows:

  1. Issue this ALTER TABLE statement:

    ALTER TABLE tbl_name DISCARD TABLESPACE;
    

    Caution: This statement deletes the current .ibd file.

  2. Put the backup .ibd file back in the proper database directory.

  3. Issue this ALTER TABLE statement:

    ALTER TABLE tbl_name IMPORT TABLESPACE;
    

In this context, a “clean.ibd file backup means:

  • There are no uncommitted modifications by transactions in the .ibd file.

  • There are no unmerged insert buffer entries in the .ibd file.

  • Purge has removed all delete-marked index records from the .ibd file.

  • mysqld has flushed all modified pages of the .ibd file from the buffer pool to the file.

You can make a clean backup .ibd file using the following method:

  1. Stop all activity from the mysqld server and commit all transactions.

  2. Wait until SHOW INNODB STATUS shows that there are no active transactions in the database, and the main thread status of InnoDB is Waiting for server activity. Then you can make a copy of the .ibd file.

Another method for making a clean copy of an .ibd file is to use the commercial InnoDB Hot Backup tool:

  1. Use InnoDB Hot Backup to back up the InnoDB installation.

  2. Start a second mysqld server on the backup and let it clean up the .ibd files in the backup.

15.7. Adding and Removing InnoDB Data and Log Files

This section describes what you can do when your InnoDB tablespace runs out of room or when you want to change the size of the log files.

The easiest way to increase the size of the InnoDB tablespace is to configure it from the beginning to be auto-extending. Specify the autoextend attribute for the last data file in the tablespace definition. Then InnoDB increases the size of that file automatically in 8MB increments when it runs out of space. The increment size can be configured setting the value of innodb_autoextend_increment, which is measured in megabytes,and whose default value is 8.

Alternatively, you can increase the size of your tablespace by adding another data file. To do this, you have to shut down the MySQL server, edit the my.cnf file to add a new data file to the end of innodb_data_file_path, and start the server again.

If your last data file was defined with the keyword autoextend, the procedure to edit my.cnf must take into account the size to which the last data file has grown. Obtain the size of the data file, round it down to the closest multiple of 1024 × 1024 bytes (= 1MB), and specify the rounded size explicitly in innodb_data_file_path. Then you can add another data file. Remember that only the last data file in the innodb_data_file_path can be specified as auto-extending.

As an example, assume that the tablespace has just one auto-extending data file ibdata1:

innodb_data_home_dir =
innodb_data_file_path = /ibdata/ibdata1:10M:autoextend

Suppose that this data file, over time, has grown to 988MB. Below is the configuration line after adding another auto-extending data file.

innodb_data_home_dir =
innodb_data_file_path = /ibdata/ibdata1:988M;/disk2/ibdata2:50M:autoextend

When you add a new file to the tablespace, make sure that it does not exist. InnoDB creates and initializes the file when you restart the server.

Currently, you cannot remove a data file from the tablespace. To decrease the size of your tablespace, use this procedure:

  1. Use mysqldump to dump all your InnoDB tables.

  2. Stop the server.

  3. Remove all the existing tablespace files.

  4. Configure a new tablespace.

  5. Restart the server.

  6. Import the dump files.

If you want to change the number or the size of your InnoDB log files, you have to stop the MySQL server and make sure that it shuts down without errors. Then copy the old log files into a safe place just in case something went wrong in the shutdown and you need them to recover the tablespace. Delete the old log files from the log file directory, edit my.cnf to change the log file configuration, and start the MySQL server again. mysqld sees that no log files exist at startup and tells you that it is creating new ones.

15.8. Backing Up and Recovering an InnoDB Database

The key to safe database management is taking regular backups.

InnoDB Hot Backup is an online backup tool you can use to backup your InnoDB database while it is running. InnoDB Hot Backup does not require you to shut down your database and it does not set any locks or disturb your normal database processing. InnoDB Hot Backup is a non-free (commercial) add-on tool whose annual license fee is €390 per computer on which the MySQL server is run. See the InnoDB Hot Backup home page for detailed information and screenshots.

If you are able to shut down your MySQL server, you can make a binary backup that consists of all files used by InnoDB to manage its tables. Use the following procedure:

  1. Shut down your MySQL server and make sure that it shuts down without errors.

  2. Copy all your data files (ibdata files and .ibd files) into a safe place.

  3. Copy all your ib_logfile files to a safe place.

  4. Copy your my.cnf configuration file or files to a safe place.

  5. Copy all the .frm files for your InnoDB tables to a safe place.

Replication works with InnoDB tables, so you can use MySQL replication capabilities to keep a copy of your database at database sites requiring high availability.

In addition to taking binary backups as just described, you should also regularly take dumps of your tables with mysqldump. The reason for this is that a binary file might be corrupted without you noticing it. Dumped tables are stored into text files that are human-readable, so spotting table corruption becomes easier. Also, since the format is simpler, the chance for serious data corruption is smaller. mysqldump also has a --single-transaction option that you can use to take a consistent snapshot without locking out other clients.

To be able to recover your InnoDB database to the present from the binary backup described above, you have to run your MySQL server with binary logging turned on. Then you can apply the binary log to the backup database to achieve point-in-time recovery:

mysqlbinlog yourhostname-bin.123 | mysql

To recover from a crash of your MySQL server, the only requirement is to restart it. InnoDB automatically checks the logs and performs a roll-forward of the database to the present. InnoDB automatically rolls back uncommitted transactions that were present at the time of the crash. During recovery, mysqld displays output something like this:

InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally.
InnoDB: Starting recovery from log files...
InnoDB: Starting log scan based on checkpoint at
InnoDB: log sequence number 0 13674004
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 0 13739520
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 0 13805056
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 0 13870592
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 0 13936128
...
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 0 20555264
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 0 20620800
InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 0 20664692
InnoDB: 1 uncommitted transaction(s) which must be rolled back
InnoDB: Starting rollback of uncommitted transactions
InnoDB: Rolling back trx no 16745
InnoDB: Rolling back of trx no 16745 completed
InnoDB: Rollback of uncommitted transactions completed
InnoDB: Starting an apply batch of log records to the database...
InnoDB: Apply batch completed
InnoDB: Started
mysqld: ready for connections

If your database gets corrupted or your disk fails, you have to do the recovery from a backup. In the case of corruption, you should first find a backup that is not corrupted. After restoring the base backup, do the recovery from the binary log files.

In some cases of database corruption it is enough just to dump, drop, and re-create one or a few corrupt tables. You can use the CHECK TABLE SQL statement to check whether a table is corrupt, although CHECK TABLE naturally cannot detect every possible kind of corruption. You can use innodb_tablespace_monitor to check the integrity of the file space management inside the tablespace files.

In some cases, apparent database page corruption is actually due to the operating system corrupting its own file cache, and the data on disk may be okay. It is best first to try restarting your computer. It may eliminate errors that appeared to be database page corruption.

15.8.1. Forcing Recovery

If there is database page corruption, you may want to dump your tables from the database with SELECT INTO OUTFILE; usually, most of the data obtained in this way is intact. Even so, the corruption may cause SELECT * FROM tbl_name or InnoDB background operations to crash or assert, or even make InnoDB roll-forward recovery crash. However, you can use to force the InnoDB storage engine to start up while preventing background operations from running, so that you are able to dump your tables. For example, you can add the following line to the [mysqld] section of your option file before restarting the server:

[mysqld]
innodb_force_recovery = 4

The allowable non-zero values for innodb_force_recovery follow. A larger number includes all precautions of lower numbers. If you are able to dump your tables with an option value of at most 4, then you are relatively safe that only some data on corrupt individual pages is lost. A value of 6 is more dramatic, because database pages are left in an obsolete state, which in turn may introduce more corruption into B-trees and other database structures.

  • 1 (SRV_FORCE_IGNORE_CORRUPT)

    Let the server run even if it detects a corrupt page; try to make SELECT * FROM tbl_name jump over corrupt index records and pages, which helps in dumping tables.

  • 2 (SRV_FORCE_NO_BACKGROUND)

    Prevent the main thread from running. If a crash would occur during the purge operation, this prevents it.

  • 3 (SRV_FORCE_NO_TRX_UNDO)

    Do not run transaction rollbacks after recovery.

  • 4 (SRV_FORCE_NO_IBUF_MERGE)

    Prevent also insert buffer merge operations. If they would cause a crash, better not do them; do not calculate table statistics.

  • 5 (SRV_FORCE_NO_UNDO_LOG_SCAN)

    Do not look at undo logs when starting the database: InnoDB treats even incomplete transactions as committed.

  • 6 (SRV_FORCE_NO_LOG_REDO)

    Do not do the log roll-forward in connection with recovery.

The database must not otherwise be used with any of these options enabled. As a safety measure, InnoDB prevents users from performing INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operations when innodb_force_recovery is set to a value greater than 0.

You may DROP or CREATE tables even if forced recovery is used. If you know that a given table is causing a crash on rollback, you can drop it. You can also use this to stop a runaway rollback caused by a failing mass import or ALTER TABLE. You can kill the mysqld process and set innodb_force_recovery to 3 to bring the database up without the rollback, then DROP the table that is causing the runaway rollback.

15.8.2. Checkpoints

InnoDB implements a checkpoint mechanism known as “fuzzy” checkpointing. InnoDB flushes modified database pages from the buffer pool in small batches. There is no need to flush the buffer pool in one single batch, which would in practice stop processing of user SQL statements during the checkpointing process.

During crash recovery, InnoDB looks for a checkpoint label written to the log files. It knows that all modifications to the database before the label are present in the disk image of the database. Then InnoDB scans the log files forward from the checkpoint, applying the logged modifications to the database.

InnoDB writes to the log files on a rotating basis. All committed modifications that make the database pages in the buffer pool different from the images on disk must be available in the log files in case InnoDB has to do a recovery. This means that when InnoDB starts to reuse a log file, it has to make sure that the database page images on disk contain the modifications logged in the log file InnoDB is going to reuse. In other words, InnoDB must create a checkpoint and this often involves flushing of modified database pages to disk.

The preceding description explains why making your log files very large may save disk I/O in checkpointing. It often makes sense to set the total size of the log files as big as the buffer pool or even bigger. The drawback of big log files is that crash recovery can take longer because there is more logged information to apply to the database.

15.9. Moving an InnoDB Database to Another Machine

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, you should have all table and database names in lowercase. A convenient way to accomplish this is to add the following line to the [mysqld] section of your my.cnf or my.ini before creating any databases or tables:

[mysqld]
lower_case_table_names=1

Like MyISAM data files, InnoDB data and log files are binary-compatible on all platforms having the same floating-point number format. You can move an InnoDB database simply by copying all the relevant files listed in Section 15.8, “Backing Up and Recovering an InnoDB Database”. If the floating-point formats differ but you have not used FLOAT or DOUBLE data types in your tables, then the procedure is the same: simply copy the relevant files. If the formats differ and your tables contain floating-point data, you must use mysqldump to dump your tables on one machine and then import the dump files on the other machine.

One way to increase performance is to switch off autocommit mode when importing data, assuming that the tablespace has enough space for the big rollback segment that the import transactions generate. Do the commit only after importing a whole table or a segment of a table.

15.10. InnoDB Transaction Model and Locking

In the InnoDB transaction model, the goal has been to combine the best properties of a multi-versioning database with traditional two-phase locking. InnoDB does locking on the row level and runs queries as non-locking consistent reads by default, in the style of Oracle. The lock table in InnoDB is stored so space-efficiently that lock escalation is not needed: Typically several users are allowed to lock every row in the database, or any random subset of the rows, without InnoDB running out of memory.

15.10.1. InnoDB Lock Modes

InnoDB implements standard row-level locking where there are two types of locks:

  • A shared (S) lock allows a transaction to read a row (tuple).

  • An exclusive (X) lock allows a transaction to update or delete a row.

If a transaction A holds an exclusive (X) lock on tuple t, then a request from some distinct transaction B for a lock of either type on t cannot be granted immediately. Instead, transaction B has to wait for transaction A to release its lock on tuple t.

If transaction A holds a shared (S) lock on tuple t, then

  • A request from some distinct transaction B for an X lock on t cannot be granted immediately.

  • A request from some distinct transaction B for an S lock on t can be granted immediately. As a result, both A and B hold an S lock on t.

Additionally, InnoDB supports multiple granularity locking which allows coexistence of record locks and locks on entire tables. To make locking at multiple granularity levels practical, additional types of locks, called intention locks are used. Intention locks are table locks in InnoDB. The idea behind intention locks is for a transaction to indicate which type of lock (shared or exclusive) it will require later for a row in that table. There are two types of intention locks used in InnoDB (assume that transaction T has requested a lock of the indicated type on table R):

  • Intention shared (IS): Transaction T intends to set S locks on individual tuples in table T.

  • Intention exclusive (IX): Transaction T intends to set X locks on those tuples.

The intention locking protocol is as follows:

  • Before a given transaction can acquire an S lock on a given row, it must first acquire an IS or stronger lock on the table containing that row.

  • Before a given transaction can acquire an X lock on a given row, it must first acquire an IX lock on the table containing that row.

These rules can be conveniently summarized by means of a lock type compatibility matrix:

 XIXSIS
XConflictConflictConflictConflict
IXConflictCompatibleConflictCompatible
SConflictConflictCompatibleCompatible
ISConflictCompatibleCompatibleCompatible

A lock is granted to a requesting transaction if it is compatible with existing locks. A lock is not granted to a requesting transaction if it conflicts with existing locks. A transaction waits until the conflicting existing lock is released. If a lock request conflicts with an existing lock and cannot be granted because it would cause deadlock, an error occurs.

Thus, intention locks do not block anything except full table requests (for example, LOCK TABLES ... WRITE). The main purpose of IX and IS locks is to show that someone is locking a row, or going to lock a row in the table.

The following example illustrates how an error can occur when a lock request would cause a deadlock. The example involves two clients, A and B.

First, client A creates a table containing one row, and then begins a transaction. Within the transaction, A obtains an S lock on the row by selecting it in share mode:

mysql> CREATE TABLE t (i INT) ENGINE = InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.07 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO t (i) VALUES(1);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.09 sec)

mysql> START TRANSACTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM t WHERE i = 1 LOCK IN SHARE MODE;
+------+
| i    |
+------+
|    1 |
+------+
1 row in set (0.10 sec)

Next, client B begins a transaction and attempts to delete the row from the table:

mysql> START TRANSACTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> DELETE FROM t WHERE i = 1;

The delete operation requires an X lock. The lock cannot be granted because it is incompatible with the S lock that client A holds, so the request goes on the queue of lock requests for the row and client B blocks.

Finally, client A also attempts to delete the row from the table:

mysql> DELETE FROM t WHERE i = 1;
ERROR 1213 (40001): Deadlock found when trying to get lock;
try restarting transaction

Deadlock occurs here because client A needs an X lock to delete the row. However, that lock request cannot be granted because client B is already has a request for an X lock and is waiting for client A to release its S lock. Nor can the S lock held by A be upgraded to an X lock because of the prior request by B for an X lock. As a result, InnoDB generates an error for client A and releases its locks. At that point, the lock request for client B can be granted and B deletes the row from the table.

15.10.2. InnoDB and AUTOCOMMIT

In InnoDB, all user activity occurs inside a transaction. If the autocommit mode is enabled, each SQL statement forms a single transaction on its own. MySQL always starts a new connection with autocommit enabled.

If the autocommit mode is switched off with SET AUTOCOMMIT = 0, then we can consider that a user always has a transaction open. A SQL COMMIT or ROLLBACK statement ends the current transaction and a new one starts. Both statements release all InnoDB locks that were set during the current transaction. A COMMIT means that the changes made in the current transaction are made permanent and become visible to other users. A ROLLBACK statement, on the other hand, cancels all modifications made by the current transaction.

If the connection has autocommit enabled, the user can still perform a multiple-statement transaction by starting it with an explicit START TRANSACTION or BEGIN statement and ending it with COMMIT or ROLLBACK.

15.10.3. InnoDB and TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL

In terms of the SQL:1992 transaction isolation levels, the InnoDB default is REPEATABLE READ. In MySQL 5.0, InnoDB offers all four transaction isolation levels described by the SQL standard. You can set the default isolation level for all connections by using the --transaction-isolation option on the command line or in option files. For example, you can set the option in the [mysqld] section of my.cnf like this:

[mysqld]
transaction-isolation = {READ-UNCOMMITTED | READ-COMMITTED
                         | REPEATABLE-READ | SERIALIZABLE}

A user can change the isolation level of a single session or all new incoming connections with the SET TRANSACTION statement. Its syntax is as follows:

SET [SESSION | GLOBAL] TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL
                       {READ UNCOMMITTED | READ COMMITTED
                        | REPEATABLE READ | SERIALIZABLE}

Note that there are hyphens in the level names for the --transaction-isolation option, but not for the SET TRANSACTION statement.

The default behavior is to set the isolation level for the next (not started) transaction. If you use the GLOBAL keyword, the statement sets the default transaction level globally for all new connections created from that point on (but not existing connections). You need the SUPER privilege to do this. Using the SESSION keyword sets the default transaction level for all future transactions performed on the current connection.

Any client is free to change the session isolation level (even in the middle of a transaction), or the isolation level for the next transaction.

You can query the global and session transaction isolation levels with these statements:

SELECT @@global.tx_isolation;
SELECT @@tx_isolation;

In row-level locking, InnoDB uses next-key locking. That means that besides index records, InnoDB can also lock the “gap” preceding an index record to block insertions by other users immediately before the index record. A next-key lock refers to a lock that locks an index record and the gap before it. A gap lock refers to a lock that only locks a gap before some index record.

A detailed description of each isolation level in InnoDB follows:

  • READ UNCOMMITTED

    SELECT statements are performed in a non-locking fashion, but a possible earlier version of a record might be used. Thus, using this isolation level, such reads are not consistent. This is also called a “dirty read”. Otherwise, this isolation level works like READ COMMITTED.

  • READ COMMITTED

    A somewhat Oracle-like isolation level. All SELECT ... FOR UPDATE and SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE statements lock only the index records, not the gaps before them, and thus allow the free insertion of new records next to locked records. UPDATE and DELETE statements using a unique index with a unique search condition lock only the index record found, not the gap before it. In range-type UPDATE and DELETE statements, InnoDB must set next-key or gap locks and block insertions by other users to the gaps covered by the range. This is necessary because “phantom rows” must be blocked for MySQL replication and recovery to work.

    Consistent reads behave as in Oracle: Each consistent read, even within the same transaction, sets and reads its own fresh snapshot. See Section 15.10.4, “Consistent Non-Locking Read”.

  • REPEATABLE READ

    This is the default isolation level of InnoDB. SELECT ... FOR UPDATE, SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE, UPDATE, and DELETE statements that use a unique index with a unique search condition lock only the index record found, not the gap before it. With other search conditions, these operations employ next-key locking, locking the index range scanned with next-key or gap locks, and block new insertions by other users.

    In consistent reads, there is an important difference from the previous isolation level: In this level, all consistent reads within the same transaction read the same snapshot established by the first read. This convention means that if you issue several plain SELECT statements within the same transaction, these SELECT statements are consistent also with respect to each other. See Section 15.10.4, “Consistent Non-Locking Read”.

  • SERIALIZABLE

    This level is like REPEATABLE READ, but all plain SELECT statements are implicitly converted to SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE.

15.10.4. Consistent Non-Locking Read

A consistent read means that InnoDB uses its multi-versioning to present to a query a snapshot of the database at a point in time. The query see the changes made by exactly those transactions that committed before that point of time, and no changes made by later or uncommitted transactions. The exception to this rule is that the query sees the changes made by the transaction itself that issues the query.

If you are running with the default REPEATABLE READ isolation level, then all consistent reads within the same transaction read the snapshot established by the first such read in that transaction. You can get a fresher snapshot for your queries by committing the current transaction and after that issuing new queries.

Consistent read is the default mode in which InnoDB processes SELECT statements in READ COMMITTED and REPEATABLE READ isolation levels. A consistent read does not set any locks on the tables it accesses, and therefore other users are free to modify those tables at the same time a consistent read is being performed on the table.

Note that consistent read does not work over DROP TABLE and over ALTER TABLE. Consistent read does not work over DROP TABLE because MySQL can't use table that has been dropped and InnoDB destroys the table. Consistent read does not work over ALTER TABLE because it is executed inside of the transaction which creates a new table and inserts rows from the old table to the new table. Now, when you reissue the consistent read, it will not see any rows in the new table, because they were inserted in a transaction that is not visible in the snapshot that the consistent read reads.

15.10.5. Locking Reads SELECT ... FOR UPDATE and SELECT ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE

In some circumstances, a consistent read is not convenient. For example, you might want to add a new row into your table child, and make sure that the child has a parent in table parent. The following example shows how to implement referential integrity in your application code.

Suppose that you use a consistent read to read the table parent and indeed see the parent of the child in the table. Can you safely add the child row to table child? No, because it may happen that meanwhile some other user deletes the parent row from the table parent, without you being aware of it.

The solution is to perform the SELECT in a locking mode using LOCK IN SHARE MODE:

SELECT * FROM parent WHERE NAME = 'Jones' LOCK IN SHARE MODE;

Performing a read in share mode means that we read the latest available data, and set a shared mode lock on the rows we read. A shared mode lock prevents others from updating or deleting the row we have read. Also, if the latest data belongs to a yet uncommitted transaction of another client connection, we wait until that transaction commits. After we see that the preceding query returns the parent 'Jones', we can safely add the child record to the child table and commit our transaction.

Let us look at another example: We have an integer counter field in a table child_codes that we use to assign a unique identifier to each child added to table child. Obviously, using a consistent read or a shared mode read to read the present value of the counter is not a good idea, since two users of the database may then see the same value for the counter, and a duplicate-key error occurs if two users attempt to add children with the same identifier to the table.

Here, LOCK IN SHARE MODE is not a good solution because if two users read the counter at the same time, at least one of them ends up in deadlock when attempting to update the counter.

In this case, there are two good ways to implement the reading and incrementing of the counter: (1) update the counter first by incrementing it by 1 and only after that read it, or (2) read the counter first with a lock mode FOR UPDATE, and increment after that. The latter approach can be implemented as follows:

SELECT counter_field FROM child_codes FOR UPDATE;
UPDATE child_codes SET counter_field = counter_field + 1;

A SELECT ... FOR UPDATE reads the latest available data, setting exclusive locks on each row it reads. Thus, it sets the same locks a searched SQL UPDATE would set on the rows.

Please note that the above is merely an example of how SELECT ... FOR UPDATE works. In MySQL, the specific task of generating a unique identifier actually can be accomplished using only a single access to the table:

UPDATE child_codes SET counter_field = LAST_INSERT_ID(counter_field + 1);
SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();

The SELECT statement merely retrieves the identifier information (specific to the current connection). It does not access any table.

15.10.6. Next-Key Locking: Avoiding the Phantom Problem

In row-level locking, InnoDB uses an algorithm called next-key locking. InnoDB performs the row-level locking in such a way that when it searches or scans an index of a table, it sets shared or exclusive locks on the index records it encounters. Thus, the row-level locks are actually index record locks.

The locks InnoDB sets on index records also affect the “gap” before that index record. If a user has a shared or exclusive lock on record R in an index, another user cannot insert a new index record immediately before R in the index order. This locking of gaps is done to prevent the so-called “phantom problem”. Suppose that you want to read and lock all children from the child table having an identifier value greater than 100, with the intention of updating some column in the selected rows later:

SELECT * FROM child WHERE id > 100 FOR UPDATE;

Suppose that there is an index on the id column. The query scans that index starting from the first record where id is bigger than 100. If the locks set on the index records would not lock out inserts made in the gaps, a new row might meanwhile be inserted to the table. If you execute the same SELECT within the same transaction, you would see a new row in the result set returned by the query. This is contrary the isolation principle of transactions: A transaction should be able to run so that the data it has read does not change during the transaction. If we regard a set of rows as a data item, the new “phantom” child would violate this isolation principle.

When InnoDB scans an index, it can also lock the gap after the last record in the index. Just that happens in the previous example: The locks set by InnoDB prevent any insert to the table where id would be bigger than 100.

You can use next-key locking to implement a uniqueness check in your application: If you read your data in share mode and do not see a duplicate for a row you are going to insert, then you can safely insert your row and know that the next-key lock set on the successor of your row during the read prevents anyone meanwhile inserting a duplicate for your row. Thus, the next-key locking allows you to “lock” the non-existence of something in your table.

15.10.7. An Example of How the Consistent Read Works in InnoDB

Suppose that you are running in the default REPEATABLE READ isolation level. When you issue a consistent read, that is, an ordinary SELECT statement, InnoDB gives your transaction a timepoint according to which your query sees the database. If another transaction deletes a row and commits after your timepoint was assigned, you do not see the row as having been deleted. Inserts and updates are treated similarly.

You can advance your timepoint by committing your transaction and then doing another SELECT.

This is called multi-versioned concurrency control .

               User A                 User B

           SET AUTOCOMMIT=0;      SET AUTOCOMMIT=0;
time
|          SELECT * FROM t;
|          empty set
|                                 INSERT INTO t VALUES (1, 2);
|
v          SELECT * FROM t;
           empty set
                                  COMMIT;

           SELECT * FROM t;
           empty set

           COMMIT;

           SELECT * FROM t;
           ---------------------
           |    1    |    2    |
           ---------------------
           1 row in set

In this example, user A sees the row inserted by B only when B has committed the insert and A has committed as well, so that the timepoint is advanced past the commit of B.

If you want to see the “freshest” state of the database, you should use either the READ COMMITTED isolation level or a locking read:

SELECT * FROM t LOCK IN SHARE MODE;

15.10.8. Locks Set by Different SQL Statements in InnoDB

A locking read, an UPDATE, or a DELETE generally set record locks on every index record that is scanned in the processing of the SQL query. It does not matter if there are WHERE conditions in the query that would exclude the row from the result set of the query. InnoDB does not remember the exact WHERE condition, but only knows which index ranges were scanned. The record locks are normally next-key locks that also block inserts to the “gap” immediately before the record.

If the locks to be set are exclusive, then InnoDB always retrieves also the clustered index record and sets a lock on it.

If you do not have indexes suitable for your query and MySQL has to scan the whole table to process the query, every row of the table becomes locked, which in turn blocks all inserts by other users to the table. It is important to create good indexes so that your queries do not unnecessarily need to scan many rows.

  • SELECT ... FROM is a consistent read, reading a snapshot of the database and setting no locks unless the transaction isolation level is set to SERIALIZABLE. For SERIALIZABLE level, this sets shared next-key locks on the index records it encounters.

  • SELECT ... FROM ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE sets shared next-key locks on all index records the read encounters.

  • SELECT ... FROM ... FOR UPDATE sets exclusive next-key locks on all index records the read encounters.

  • INSERT INTO ... VALUES (...) sets an exclusive lock on the inserted row. Note that this lock is not a next-key lock and does not prevent other users from inserting to the gap before the inserted row. If a duplicate-key error occurs, a shared lock on the duplicate index record is set.

  • While initializing a previously specified AUTO_INCREMENT column on a table, InnoDB sets an exclusive lock on the end of the index associated with the AUTO_INCREMENT column. In accessing the auto-increment counter, InnoDB uses a specific table lock mode AUTO-INC where the lock lasts only to the end of the current SQL statement, instead of to the end of the whole transaction. See Section 15.10.2, “InnoDB and AUTOCOMMIT.

    In MySQL 5.0, InnoDB fetches the value of a previously initialized AUTO_INCREMENT column without setting any locks.

  • INSERT INTO T SELECT ... FROM S WHERE ... sets an exclusive (non-next-key) lock on each row inserted into T. It does the search on S as a consistent read, but sets shared next-key locks on S if MySQL binary logging is turned on. InnoDB has to set locks in the latter case: In roll-forward recovery from a backup, every SQL statement has to be executed in exactly the same way it was done originally.

  • CREATE TABLE ... SELECT ... performs the SELECT as a consistent read or with shared locks, as in the previous item.

  • REPLACE is done like an insert if there is no collision on a unique key. Otherwise, an exclusive next-key lock is placed on the row that has to be updated.

  • UPDATE ... WHERE ... sets an exclusive next-key lock on every record the search encounters.

  • DELETE FROM ... WHERE ... sets an exclusive next-key lock on every record the search encounters.

  • If a FOREIGN KEY constraint is defined on a table, any insert, update, or delete that requires checking of the constraint condition sets shared record-level locks on the records it looks at to check the constraint. InnoDB also sets these locks in the case where the constraint fails.

  • LOCK TABLES sets table locks, but it is the higher MySQL layer above the InnoDB layer that sets these locks. InnoDB is aware of table locks if innodb_table_locks=1 and AUTOCOMMIT=0, and the MySQL layer above InnoDB knows about row-level locks. Otherwise, InooDB's automatic deadlock detection cannot detect deadlocks where such table locks are involved. Also, since the higher MySQL layer does not know about row-level locks, it is possible to get a table lock on a table where another user currently has row-level locks. However, this does not endager transaction integrity, as discussed in Section 15.10.10, “Deadlock Detection and Rollback”. See also Section 15.16, “Restrictions on InnoDB Tables”.

15.10.9. When Does MySQL Implicitly Commit or Roll Back a Transaction?

MySQL begins each client connection with autocommit mode enabled by default. When autocommit is enabled, MySQL does a commit after each SQL statement if that statement did not return an error.

If you have the autocommit mode off and close a connection without calling an explicit commit of your transaction, then MySQL rolls back your transaction.

If an SQL statement returns an error, the commit/rollback behavior depends on the error. See Section 15.15, “InnoDB Error Handling”.

Each of the following statements (and any synonyms for them) implicitly end a transaction, as if you had done a COMMIT before executing the statement:

  • ALTER FUNCTION, ALTER PROCEDURE, ALTER TABLE, BEGIN, CREATE DATABASE, CREATE FUNCTION, CREATE INDEX, CREATE PROCEDURE, CREATE TABLE, DROP DATABASE, DROP FUNCTION, DROP INDEX, DROP PROCEDURE, DROP TABLE, LOAD MASTER DATA, LOCK TABLES, RENAME TABLE, SET AUTOCOMMIT=1, START TRANSACTION, TRUNCATE, UNLOCK TABLES.

  • UNLOCK TABLES commits a transaction only if any tables are currently locked.

  • The CREATE TABLE, CREATE DATABASE DROP DATABASE, and TRUNCATE TABLE statements cause an implicit commit beginning with MySQL 5.0.8. The ALTER FUNCTION, ALTER PROCEDURE, CREATE FUNCTION, CREATE PROCEDURE, DROP FUNCTION, and DROP PROCEDURE statements cause an implicit commit beginning with MySQL MySQL 5.0.13.

  • The CREATE TABLE statement in InnoDB is processed as a single transaction. This means that a ROLLBACK from the user does not undo CREATE TABLE statements the user made during that transaction.

Transactions cannot be nested. This is a consequence of the implicit COMMIT performed for any current transaction when you issue a START TRANSACTION statement or one of its synonyms.

15.10.10. Deadlock Detection and Rollback

InnoDB automatically detects a deadlock of transactions and rolls back a transaction or transactions to prevent the deadlock. InnoDB tries to pick small transactions to roll back, the size of a transaction being determined by the number of rows inserted, updated, or deleted.

InnoDB is aware of table locks if innodb_table_locks=1 (1 is the default), and the MySQL layer above it knows about row-level locks. Otherwise, InnoDB cannot detect deadlocks where a table lock set by a MySQL LOCK TABLES statement or a lock set by a storage engine other than InnoDB is involved. You must resolve these situations by setting the value of the innodb_lock_wait_timeout system variable.

When InnoDB performs a complete rollback of a transaction, all the locks of the transaction are released. However, if just a single SQL statement is rolled back as a result of an error, some of the locks set by the SQL statement may be preserved. This is because InnoDB stores row locks in a format such it cannot know afterward which lock was set by which SQL statement.

15.10.11. How to Cope with Deadlocks

Deadlocks are a classic problem in transactional databases, but they are not dangerous unless they are so frequent that you cannot run certain transactions at all. Normally, you must write your applications so that they are always prepared to re-issue a transaction if it gets rolled back because of a deadlock.

InnoDB uses automatic row-level locking. You can get deadlocks even in the case of transactions that just insert or delete a single row. That is because these operations are not really “atomic”; they automatically set locks on the (possibly several) index records of the row inserted or deleted.

You can cope with deadlocks and reduce the likelihood of their occurrence with the following techniques:

  • Use SHOW INNODB STATUS to determine the cause of the latest deadlock. That can help you to tune your application to avoid deadlocks.

  • Always be prepared to re-issue a transaction if it fails due to deadlock. Deadlocks are not dangerous. Just try again.

  • Commit your transactions often. Small transactions are less prone to collide.

  • If you are using locking reads (SELECT ... FOR UPDATE or ... LOCK IN SHARE MODE), try using a lower isolation level such as READ COMMITTED.

  • Access your tables and rows in a fixed order. Then transactions form well-defined queues and do not deadlock.

  • Add well-chosen indexes to your tables. Then your queries need to scan fewer index records and consequently set fewer locks. Use EXPLAIN SELECT to determine which indexes the MySQL server regards as the most appropriate for your queries.

  • Use less locking. If you can afford to allow a SELECT to return data from an old snapshot, do not add the clause FOR UPDATE or LOCK IN SHARE MODE to it. Using the READ COMMITTED isolation level is good here, because each consistent read within the same transaction reads from its own fresh snapshot.

  • If nothing else helps, serialize your transactions with table-level locks. The correct way to use LOCK TABLES with transactional tables, like InnoDB, is to set AUTOCOMMIT = 0 and not to call UNLOCK TABLES until you commit the transaction explicitly. For example, if you need to write to table t1 and read from table t2, you can do this:

    SET AUTOCOMMIT=0;
    LOCK TABLES t1 WRITE, t2 READ, ...;
    [do something with tables t1 and t2 here];
    COMMIT;
    UNLOCK TABLES;
    

    Table-level locks make your transactions queue nicely, and deadlocks are avoided.

  • Another way to serialize transactions is to create an auxiliary “semaphore” table that contains just a single row. Have each transaction update that row before accessing other tables. In that way, all transactions happen in a serial fashion. Note that the InnoDB instant deadlock detection algorithm also works in this case, because the serializing lock is a row-level lock. With MySQL table-level locks, the timeout method must be used to resolve deadlocks.

  • In applications using MySQL's LOCK TABLES command, MySQL 5.0 does not set InnoDB table locks if AUTOCOMMIT=1.

15.11. InnoDB Performance Tuning Tips

  • If the Unix top tool or the Windows Task Manager shows that the CPU usage percentage with your workload is less than 70%, your workload is probably disk-bound. Maybe you are making too many transaction commits, or the buffer pool is too small. Making the buffer pool bigger can help, but do not set it equal to more than 80% of physical memory.

  • Wrap several modifications into one transaction. InnoDB must flush the log to disk at each transaction commit if that transaction made modifications to the database. Since the rotation speed of a disk is typically at most 167 revolutions/second, that constrains the number of commits to the same 167th of a second if the disk does not “fool” the operating system.

  • If you can afford the loss of some of the latest committed transactions, you can set the my.cnf parameter innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit to 0. InnoDB tries to flush the log once per second anyway, although the flush is not guaranteed.

  • Make your log files big, even as big as the buffer pool. When InnoDB has written the log files full, it has to write the modified contents of the buffer pool to disk in a checkpoint. Small log files cause many unnecessary disk writes. The drawback of big log files is that the recovery time is longer.

  • Make the log buffer quite large as well (on the order of 8MB).

  • Use the VARCHAR column type instead of CHAR if you are storing variable-length strings or if the column may contain many NULL values. A CHAR(N) column always takes N bytes to store data, even if the string is shorter or its value is NULL. Smaller tables fit better in the buffer pool and reduce disk I/O.

    When using row_format=compact (the default InnoDB record format in MySQL 5.0) and variable-length character sets, such as utf8 or sjis, CHAR(N) will occupy a variable amount of space, at least N bytes.

  • In some versions of GNU/Linux and Unix, flushing files to disk with the Unix fsync() (which InnoDB uses by default) and other similar methods is surprisingly slow. If you are dissatisfied with database write performance, you might try setting innodb_flush_method in my.cnf to O_DSYNC, although O_DSYNC seems to be slower on most systems.

  • When using the InnoDB storage engine on Solaris 10 for x86_64 architecture (AMD Opteron), it is important to to mount any filesystems used for storing InnoDB-related files using the forcedirectio option. (The default on Solaris 10/x86_64 is not to use this filesystem mounting option.) Failing to use forcedirectio will cause a serious degradation of InnoDB's speed and performance on this platform.

  • When importing data into InnoDB, make sure that MySQL does not have autocommit mode enabled because that would require a log flush to disk for every insert. To disable autocommit during your import operation, surround it with SET AUTOCOMMIT and COMMIT statements:

    SET AUTOCOMMIT=0;
    /* SQL import statements ... */
    COMMIT;
    

    If you use the mysqldump option --opt, you get dump files that are fast to import into an InnoDB table, even without wrapping them with the SET AUTOCOMMIT and COMMIT statements.

  • Beware of big rollbacks of mass inserts: InnoDB uses the insert buffer to save disk I/O in inserts, but no such mechanism is used in a corresponding rollback. A disk-bound rollback can take 30 times as long to perform as the corresponding insert. Killing the database process does not help because the rollback starts again on server startup. The only way to get rid of a runaway rollback is to increase the buffer pool so that the rollback becomes CPU-bound and runs fast, or to use a special procedure. See Section 15.8.1, “Forcing Recovery”.

  • Beware also of other big disk-bound operations. Use DROP TABLE and CREATE TABLE to empty a table, not DELETE FROM tbl_name.

  • Use the multiple-row INSERT syntax to reduce communication overhead between the client and the server if you need to insert many rows:

    INSERT INTO yourtable VALUES (1,2), (5,5), ...;
    

    This tip is valid for inserts into any table type, not just InnoDB.

  • If you have UNIQUE constraints on secondary keys, you can speed up table imports by temporarily turning off the uniqueness checks during the import session:

    SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=0;
    

    For big tables, this saves a lot of disk I/O because InnoDB can use its insert buffer to write secondary index records in a batch.

  • If you have FOREIGN KEY constraints in your tables, you can speed up table imports by turning the foreign key checks off for the duration of the import session:

    SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
    

    For big tables, this can save a lot of disk I/O.

  • If you often have recurring queries to tables that are not updated frequently, use the query cache:

    [mysqld]
    query_cache_type = ON
    query_cache_size = 10M
    

15.11.1. SHOW INNODB STATUS and the InnoDB Monitors

InnoDB includes InnoDB Monitors that print information about the InnoDB internal state. You can use the SQL statement SHOW INNODB STATUS to fetch the output of the standard InnoDB Monitor to your SQL client. This information is useful in performance tuning. (If you are using the mysql interactive SQL client, the output is more readable if you replace the usual semicolon statement terminator with \G.) For a discussion of InnoDB lock modes see Section 15.10.1, “InnoDB Lock Modes”.

mysql> SHOW INNODB STATUS\G

Another way to use InnoDB Monitors is to let them continuously write data to the standard output of the server mysqld. In this case, no output is sent to clients. When switched on, InnoDB Monitors print data about every 15 seconds. Server output usually is directed to the .err log in the MySQL data directory. This data is useful in performance tuning. On Windows, you must start the server from a command prompt in a console window with the --console option if you want to direct the output to the window rather than to the error log.

Monitor output includes information of the following types:

  • Table and record locks held by each active transaction

  • Lock waits of a transactions

  • Semaphore waits of threads

  • Pending file I/O requests

  • Buffer pool statistics

  • Purge and insert buffer merge activity of the main InnoDB thread

To cause the standard InnoDB Monitor to write to the standard output of mysqld, use the following SQL statement:

CREATE TABLE innodb_monitor(a INT) ENGINE=INNODB;

The monitor can be stopped by issuing the following statement:

DROP TABLE innodb_monitor;

The CREATE TABLE syntax is just a way to pass a command to the InnoDB engine through MySQL's SQL parser: The only things that matter are the table name innodb_monitor and that it be an InnoDB table. The structure of the table is not relevant at all for the InnoDB Monitor. If you shut down the server when the monitor is running, and you want to start the monitor again, you must drop the table before you can issue a new CREATE TABLE statement to start the monitor. This syntax may change in a future release.

You can use innodb_lock_monitor in a similar fashion. This is the same as innodb_monitor, except that it also provides a great deal of lock information. A separate innodb_tablespace_monitor prints a list of created file segments existing in the tablespace and validates the tablespace allocation data structures. In addition, there is innodb_table_monitor with which you can print the contents of the InnoDB internal data dictionary.

A sample of InnoDB Monitor output:

mysql> SHOW INNODB STATUS\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Status:
=====================================
030709 13:00:59 INNODB MONITOR OUTPUT
=====================================
Per second averages calculated from the last 18 seconds
----------
SEMAPHORES
----------
OS WAIT ARRAY INFO: reservation count 413452, signal count 378357
--Thread 32782 has waited at btr0sea.c line 1477 for 0.00 seconds the semaphore:
X-lock on RW-latch at 41a28668 created in file btr0sea.c line 135
a writer (thread id 32782) has reserved it in mode wait exclusive
number of readers 1, waiters flag 1
Last time read locked in file btr0sea.c line 731
Last time write locked in file btr0sea.c line 1347
Mutex spin waits 0, rounds 0, OS waits 0
RW-shared spins 108462, OS waits 37964; RW-excl spins 681824, OS waits 375485
------------------------
LATEST FOREIGN KEY ERROR
------------------------
030709 13:00:59 Transaction:
TRANSACTION 0 290328284, ACTIVE 0 sec, process no 3195, OS thread id 34831 inser
ting
15 lock struct(s), heap size 2496, undo log entries 9
MySQL thread id 25, query id 4668733 localhost heikki update
insert into ibtest11a (D, B, C) values (5, 'khDk' ,'khDk')
Foreign key constraint fails for table test/ibtest11a:
,
  CONSTRAINT `0_219242` FOREIGN KEY (`A`, `D`) REFERENCES `ibtest11b` (`A`, `D`)
 ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE
Trying to add in child table, in index PRIMARY tuple:
 0: len 4; hex 80000101; asc ....;; 1: len 4; hex 80000005; asc ....;; 2: len 4;
 hex 6b68446b; asc khDk;; 3: len 6; hex 0000114e0edc; asc ...N..;; 4: len 7; hex
 00000000c3e0a7; asc .......;; 5: len 4; hex 6b68446b; asc khDk;;
But in parent table test/ibtest11b, in index PRIMARY,
the closest match we can find is record:
RECORD: info bits 0 0: len 4; hex 8000015b; asc ...[;; 1: len 4; hex 80000005; a
sc ....;; 2: len 3; hex 6b6864; asc khd;; 3: len 6; hex 0000111ef3eb; asc ......
;; 4: len 7; hex 800001001e0084; asc .......;; 5: len 3; hex 6b6864; asc khd;;
------------------------
LATEST DETECTED DEADLOCK
------------------------
030709 12:59:58
*** (1) TRANSACTION:
TRANSACTION 0 290252780, ACTIVE 1 sec, process no 3185, OS thread id 30733 inser
ting
LOCK WAIT 3 lock struct(s), heap size 320, undo log entries 146
MySQL thread id 21, query id 4553379 localhost heikki update
INSERT INTO alex1 VALUES(86, 86, 794,'aA35818','bb','c79166','d4766t','e187358f'
,'g84586','h794',date_format('2001-04-03 12:54:22','%Y-%m-%d %H:%i'),7
*** (1) WAITING FOR THIS LOCK TO BE GRANTED:
RECORD LOCKS space id 0 page no 48310 n bits 568 table test/alex1 index symbole
trx id 0 290252780 lock mode S waiting
Record lock, heap no 324 RECORD: info bits 0 0: len 7; hex 61613335383138; asc a
a35818;; 1:
*** (2) TRANSACTION:
TRANSACTION 0 290251546, ACTIVE 2 sec, process no 3190, OS thread id 32782 inser
ting
130 lock struct(s), heap size 11584, undo log entries 437
MySQL thread id 23, query id 4554396 localhost heikki update
REPLACE INTO alex1 VALUES(NULL, 32, NULL,'aa3572','','c3572','d6012t','', NULL,'
h396', NULL, NULL, 7.31,7.31,7.31,200)
*** (2) HOLDS THE LOCK(S):
RECORD LOCKS space id 0 page no 48310 n bits 568 table test/alex1 index symbole
trx id 0 290251546 lock_mode X locks rec but not gap
Record lock, heap no 324 RECORD: info bits 0 0: len 7; hex 61613335383138; asc a
a35818;; 1:
*** (2) WAITING FOR THIS LOCK TO BE GRANTED:
RECORD LOCKS space id 0 page no 48310 n bits 568 table test/alex1 index symbole
trx id 0 290251546 lock_mode X locks gap before rec insert intention waiting
Record lock, heap no 82 RECORD: info bits 0 0: len 7; hex 61613335373230; asc aa
35720;; 1:
*** WE ROLL BACK TRANSACTION (1)
------------
TRANSACTIONS
------------
Trx id counter 0 290328385
Purge done for trx's n:o < 0 290315608 undo n:o < 0 17
Total number of lock structs in row lock hash table 70
LIST OF TRANSACTIONS FOR EACH SESSION:
---TRANSACTION 0 0, not started, process no 3491, OS thread id 42002
MySQL thread id 32, query id 4668737 localhost heikki
show innodb status
---TRANSACTION 0 290328384, ACTIVE 0 sec, process no 3205, OS thread id 38929 in
serting
1 lock struct(s), heap size 320
MySQL thread id 29, query id 4668736 localhost heikki update
insert into speedc values (1519229,1, 'hgjhjgghggjgjgjgjgjggjgjgjgjgjgggjgjgjlhh
gghggggghhjhghgggggghjhghghghghghhhhghghghjhhjghjghjkghjghjghjghjfhjfh
---TRANSACTION 0 290328383, ACTIVE 0 sec, process no 3180, OS thread id 28684 co
mmitting
1 lock struct(s), heap size 320, undo log entries 1
MySQL thread id 19, query id 4668734 localhost heikki update
insert into speedcm values (1603393,1, 'hgjhjgghggjgjgjgjgjggjgjgjgjgjgggjgjgjlh
hgghggggghhjhghgggggghjhghghghghghhhhghghghjhhjghjghjkghjghjghjghjfhjf
---TRANSACTION 0 290328327, ACTIVE 0 sec, process no 3200, OS thread id 36880 st
arting index read
LOCK WAIT 2 lock struct(s), heap size 320
MySQL thread id 27, query id 4668644 localhost heikki Searching rows for update
update ibtest11a set B = 'kHdkkkk' where A = 89572
------- TRX HAS BEEN WAITING 0 SEC FOR THIS LOCK TO BE GRANTED:
RECORD LOCKS space id 0 page no 65556 n bits 232 table test/ibtest11a index PRIM
ARY trx id 0 290328327 lock_mode X waiting
Record lock, heap no 1 RECORD: info bits 0 0: len 9; hex 73757072656d756d00; asc
 supremum.;;
------------------
---TRANSACTION 0 290328284, ACTIVE 0 sec, process no 3195, OS thread id 34831 ro
llback of SQL statement
ROLLING BACK 14 lock struct(s), heap size 2496, undo log entries 9
MySQL thread id 25, query id 4668733 localhost heikki update
insert into ibtest11a (D, B, C) values (5, 'khDk' ,'khDk')
---TRANSACTION 0 290327208, ACTIVE 1 sec, process no 3190, OS thread id 32782
58 lock struct(s), heap size 5504, undo log entries 159
MySQL thread id 23, query id 4668732 localhost heikki update
REPLACE INTO alex1 VALUES(86, 46, 538,'aa95666','bb','c95666','d9486t','e200498f
','g86814','h538',date_format('2001-04-03 12:54:22','%Y-%m-%d %H:%i'),
---TRANSACTION 0 290323325, ACTIVE 3 sec, process no 3185, OS thread id 30733 in
serting
4 lock struct(s), heap size 1024, undo log entries 165
MySQL thread id 21, query id 4668735 localhost heikki update
INSERT INTO alex1 VALUES(NULL, 49, NULL,'aa42837','','c56319','d1719t','', NULL,
'h321', NULL, NULL, 7.31,7.31,7.31,200)
--------
FILE I/O
--------
I/O thread 0 state: waiting for i/o request (insert buffer thread)
I/O thread 1 state: waiting for i/o request (log thread)
I/O thread 2 state: waiting for i/o request (read thread)
I/O thread 3 state: waiting for i/o request (write thread)
Pending normal aio reads: 0, aio writes: 0,
 ibuf aio reads: 0, log i/o's: 0, sync i/o's: 0
Pending flushes (fsync) log: 0; buffer pool: 0
151671 OS file reads, 94747 OS file writes, 8750 OS fsyncs
25.44 reads/s, 18494 avg bytes/read, 17.55 writes/s, 2.33 fsyncs/s
-------------------------------------
INSERT BUFFER AND ADAPTIVE HASH INDEX
-------------------------------------
Ibuf for space 0: size 1, free list len 19, seg size 21,
85004 inserts, 85004 merged recs, 26669 merges
Hash table size 207619, used cells 14461, node heap has 16 buffer(s)
1877.67 hash searches/s, 5121.10 non-hash searches/s
---
LOG
---
Log sequence number 18 1212842764
Log flushed up to   18 1212665295
Last checkpoint at  18 1135877290
0 pending log writes, 0 pending chkp writes
4341 log i/o's done, 1.22 log i/o's/second
----------------------
BUFFER POOL AND MEMORY
----------------------
Total memory allocated 84966343; in additional pool allocated 1402624
Buffer pool size   3200
Free buffers       110
Database pages     3074
Modified db pages  2674
Pending reads 0
Pending writes: LRU 0, flush list 0, single page 0
Pages read 171380, created 51968, written 194688
28.72 reads/s, 20.72 creates/s, 47.55 writes/s
Buffer pool hit rate 999 / 1000
--------------
ROW OPERATIONS
--------------
0 queries inside InnoDB, 0 queries in queue
Main thread process no. 3004, id 7176, state: purging
Number of rows inserted 3738558, updated 127415, deleted 33707, read 755779
1586.13 inserts/s, 50.89 updates/s, 28.44 deletes/s, 107.88 reads/s
----------------------------
END OF INNODB MONITOR OUTPUT
============================
1 row in set (0.05 sec)

Some notes on the output:

  • If the TRANSACTIONS section reports lock waits, your application may have lock contention. The output can also help to trace the reasons for transaction deadlocks.

  • The SEMAPHORES section reports threads waiting for a semaphore and statistics on how many times threads have needed a spin or a wait on a mutex or a rw-lock semaphore. A large number of threads waiting for semaphores may be a result of disk I/O, or contention problems inside InnoDB. Contention can be due to heavy parallelism of queries, or problems in operating system thread scheduling. Setting innodb_thread_concurrency smaller than the default value can help in such situations.

  • The BUFFER POOL AND MEMORY section gives you statistics on pages read and written. You can calculate from these numbers how many data file I/O operations your queries currently are doing.

  • The ROW OPERATIONS section shows what the main thread is doing.

InnoDB sends diagnostic output to stderr or to files rather than to stdout or fixed-size memory buffers, in order to avoid potential buffer overflows. As a side effect, the output of SHOW INNODB STATUS is written to a status file every fifteen seconds. The name of the file is innodb_status.pid, where pid is the server process ID. This file is created in the MySQL data directory. InnoDB removes the file for a normal shutdown. If abnormal shutdowns have occurred, instances of these status files may be present and must be removed manually. Before removing them, you might want to examine them to see if they contain useful information to the cause of abnormal shutdowns. IN MySQL 5.0, innodb_status.pid file is created only if the configuration option innodb_status_file=1 is set.

15.12. Implementation of Multi-Versioning

Because InnoDB is a multi-versioned database, it must keep information about old versions of rows in the tablespace. This information is stored in a data structure called a rollback segment (after an analogous data structure in Oracle).

Internally, InnoDB adds two fields to each row stored in the database. A 6-byte field indicates the transaction identifier for the last transaction that inserted or updated the row. Also, a deletion is treated internally as an update where a special bit in the row is set to mark it as deleted. Each row also contains a 7-byte field called the roll pointer. The roll pointer points to an undo log record written to the rollback segment. If the row was updated, the undo log record contains the information necessary to rebuild the content of the row before it was updated.

InnoDB uses the information in the rollback segment to perform the undo operations needed in a transaction rollback. It also uses the information to build earlier versions of a row for a consistent read.

Undo logs in the rollback segment are divided into insert and update undo logs. Insert undo logs are needed only in transaction rollback and can be discarded as soon as the transaction commits. Update undo logs are used also in consistent reads, and they can be discarded only after there is no transaction present for which InnoDB has assigned a snapshot that in a consistent read could need the information in the update undo log to build an earlier version of a database row.

You must remember to commit your transactions regularly, including those transactions that only issue consistent reads. Otherwise, InnoDB cannot discard data from the update undo logs, and the rollback segment may grow too big, filling up your tablespace.

The physical size of an undo log record in the rollback segment is typically smaller than the corresponding inserted or updated row. You can use this information to calculate the space need for your rollback segment.

In the InnoDB multi-versioning scheme, a row is not physically removed from the database immediately when you delete it with an SQL statement. Only when InnoDB can discard the update undo log record written for the deletion can it also physically remove the corresponding row and its index records from the database. This removal operation is called a purge, and it is quite fast, usually taking the same order of time as the SQL statement that did the deletion.

In a scenario where the user inserts and deletes rows in smallish batches at about the same rate in the table, it is possible that the purge thread starts to lag behind, and the table grows bigger and bigger, making everything disk-bound and very slow. Even if the table carries just 10 MB of useful data, it may grow to occupy 10 GB with all the “dead” rows. In such a case, it would be good to throttle new row operations, and allocate more resources to the purge thread. The startup option and settable global variable innodb_max_purge_lag exists for exactly this purpose. See Section 15.4, “InnoDB Startup Options” for more information.

15.13. Table and Index Structures

MySQL stores its data dictionary information for tables in .frm files in database directories. This is true for all MySQL storage engines. But every InnoDB table also has its own entry in InnoDB internal data dictionaries inside the tablespace. When MySQL drops a table or a database, it has to delete both an .frm file or files, and the corresponding entries inside the InnoDB data dictionary. This is the reason why you cannot move InnoDB tables between databases simply by moving the .frm files.

Every InnoDB table has a special index called the clustered index where the data for the rows is stored. If you define a PRIMARY KEY on your table, the index of the primary key is the clustered index.

If you do not define a PRIMARY KEY for your table, MySQL picks the first UNIQUE index that has only NOT NULL columns as the primary key and InnoDB uses it as the clustered index. If there is no such index in the table, InnoDB internally generates a clustered index where the rows are ordered by the row ID that InnoDB assigns to the rows in such a table. The row ID is a 6-byte field that increases monotonically as new rows are inserted. Thus, the rows ordered by the row ID are physically in the insertion order.

Accessing a row through the clustered index is fast because the row data is on the same page where the index search leads. If a table is large, the clustered index architecture often saves a disk I/O when compared to the traditional solution. (In many databases, the data is traditionally stored on a different page from the index record.)

In InnoDB, the records in non-clustered indexes (also called secondary indexes) contain the primary key value for the row. InnoDB uses this primary key value to search for the row from the clustered index. Note that if the primary key is long, the secondary indexes use more space.

InnoDB compares CHAR and VARCHAR strings of different lengths such that the remaining length in the shorter string is treated as if padded with spaces.

15.13.1. Physical Structure of an Index

All indexes in InnoDB are B-trees where the index records are stored in the leaf pages of the tree. The default size of an index page is 16KB. When new records are inserted, InnoDB tries to leave 1/16 of the page free for future insertions and updates of the index records.

If index records are inserted in a sequential order (ascending or descending), the resulting index pages are about 15/16 full. If records are inserted in a random order, the pages are from 1/2 to 15/16 full. If the fillfactor of an index page drops below 1/2, InnoDB tries to contract the index tree to free the page.

15.13.2. Insert Buffering

It is a common situation in a database application that the primary key is a unique identifier and new rows are inserted in the ascending order of the primary key. Thus, the insertions to the clustered index do not require random reads from a disk.

On the other hand, secondary indexes are usually non-unique, and insertions into secondary indexes happen in a relatively random order. This would cause a lot of random disk I/O operations without a special mechanism used in InnoDB.

If an index record should be inserted to a non-unique secondary index, InnoDB checks whether the secondary index page is in the buffer pool. If that is the case, InnoDB does the insertion directly to the index page. If the index page is not found in the buffer pool, InnoDB inserts the record to a special insert buffer structure. The insert buffer is kept so small that it fits entirely in the buffer pool, and insertions can be done very fast.

Periodically, the insert buffer is merged into the secondary index trees in the database. Often it is possible to merge several insertions to the same page of the index tree, saving disk I/O operations. It has been measured that the insert buffer can speed up insertions into a table up to 15 times.

The insert buffer merging may continue to happen after the inserting transaction has been committed. In fact, it may continue to happen after a server shutdown and restart (see Section 15.8.1, “Forcing Recovery”).

The insert buffer merging may take many hours, when many secondary indexes must be updated, and many rows have been inserted. During this time, disk I/O will be increased, which can cause significant slowdown on disk-bound queries. Another significant background I/O operation is the purge thread (see Section 15.12, “Implementation of Multi-Versioning”).

15.13.3. Adaptive Hash Indexes

If a table fits almost entirely in main memory, the fastest way to perform queries on it is to use hash indexes. InnoDB has an automatic mechanism that monitors index searches made to the indexes defined for a table. If InnoDB notices that queries could benefit from building a hash index, it does so automatically.

Note that the hash index is always built based on an existing B-tree index on the table. InnoDB can build a hash index on a prefix of any length of the key defined for the B-tree, depending on the pattern of searches that InnoDB observes for the B-tree index. A hash index can be partial: It is not required that the whole B-tree index is cached in the buffer pool. InnoDB builds hash indexes on demand for those pages of the index that are often accessed.

In a sense, InnoDB tailors itself through the adaptive hash index mechanism to ample main memory, coming closer to the architecture of main memory databases.

15.13.4. Physical Record Structure

Records in InnoDB tables have the following characteristics:

  • Each index record in InnoDB contains a header of six bytes. The header is used to link consecutive records together, and also in row-level locking.

  • Records in the clustered index contain fields for all user-defined columns. In addition, there is a six-byte field for the transaction ID and a seven-byte field for the roll pointer.

  • If no primary key was defined for a table, each clustered index record also contains a six-byte row ID field.

  • Each secondary index record contains also all the fields defined for the clustered index key.

  • A record contains also a pointer to each field of the record. If the total length of the fields in a record is less than 128 bytes, the pointer is one byte; otherwise, two bytes. The array of these pointers is called the record directory. The area where these pointers point is called the data part of the record.

  • Internally, InnoDB stores fixed-length character columns such as CHAR(10) in a fixed-length format. InnoDB truncates trailing spaces from VARCHAR columns. Note that MySQL may internally convert CHAR columns to VARCHAR. See Section 13.1.5.1, “Silent Column Specification Changes”.

  • An SQL NULL value reserves 1 or 2 bytes in the record directory. Besides that, an SQL NULL value reserves zero bytes in the data part of the record if stored in a variable length column. In a fixed-length column, it reserves the fixed length of the column in the data part of the record. The motivation behind reserving the fixed space for NULL values is that then an update of the column from NULL to a non-NULL value can be done in place and does not cause fragmentation of the index page.

15.14. File Space Management and Disk I/O

15.14.1. Disk I/O

InnoDB uses simulated asynchronous disk I/O: InnoDB creates a number of threads to take care of I/O operations, such as read-ahead.

There are two read-ahead heuristics in InnoDB:

  • In sequential read-ahead, if InnoDB notices that the access pattern to a segment in the tablespace is sequential, it posts in advance a batch of reads of database pages to the I/O system.

  • In random read-ahead, if InnoDB notices that some area in a tablespace seems to be in the process of being fully read into the buffer pool, it posts the remaining reads to the I/O system.

InnoDB uses a novel file flush technique called doublewrite . It adds safety to recovery following an operating system crash or a power outage, and improves performance on most varieties of Unix by reducing the need for fsync() operations.

Doublewrite means that before writing pages to a data file, InnoDB first writes them to a contiguous tablespace area called the doublewrite buffer. Only after the write and the flush to the doublewrite buffer has completed does InnoDB write the pages to their proper positions in the data file. If the operating system crashes in the middle of a page write, InnoDB can later find a good copy of the page from the doublewrite buffer during recovery.

15.14.2. Using Raw Devices for the Tablespace

In MySQL 5.0, you can also use raw disk partitions as tablespace data files. By using a raw disk, you can perform non-buffered I/O on Windows and on some Unix systems without filesystem overhead, which may improve performance.

When you create a new data file, you must put the keyword newraw immediately after the data file size in innodb_data_file_path. The partition must be at least as large as the size that you specify. Note that 1MB in InnoDB is 1024 * 1024 bytes, whereas 1MB usually means 1,000,000 bytes in disk specifications.

[mysqld]
innodb_data_home_dir=
innodb_data_file_path=/dev/hdd1:3Gnewraw;/dev/hdd2:2Gnewraw

The next time you start the server, InnoDB notices the newraw keyword and initializes the new partition. However, do not create or change any InnoDB tables yet. Otherwise, when you next restart the server, InnoDB reinitializes the partition and your changes are lost. (Starting from 3.23.44, as a safety measure InnoDB prevents users from modifying data when any partition with newraw is specified.)

After InnoDB has initialized the new partition, stop the server, change newraw in the data file specification to raw:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_home_dir=
innodb_data_file_path=/dev/hdd1:5Graw;/dev/hdd2:2Graw

Then restart the server and InnoDB allows changes to be made.

On Windows, you can allocate a disk partition as a data file like this:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_home_dir=
innodb_data_file_path=//./D::10Gnewraw

The //./ corresponds to the Windows syntax of \\.\ for accessing physical drives.

When you use raw disk partitions, be sure that they have permissions that allow read and write access by the account used for running the MySQL server.

15.14.3. File Space Management

The data files you define in the configuration file form the tablespace of InnoDB. The files are simply concatenated to form the tablespace. There is no striping in use. Currently you cannot define where in the tablespace your tables are allocated. However, in a newly created tablespace, InnoDB allocates space starting from the first data file.

The tablespace consists of database pages with a default size of 16KB. The pages are grouped into extents of 64 consecutive pages. The “files” inside a tablespace are called segments in InnoDB. The term “rollback segment” is somewhat confusing because it actually contains many tablespace segments.

Two segments are allocated for each index in InnoDB. One is for non-leaf nodes of the B-tree, the other is for the leaf nodes. The idea here is to achieve better sequentiality for the leaf nodes, which contain the data.

When a segment grows inside the tablespace, InnoDB allocates the first 32 pages to it individually. After that InnoDB starts to allocate whole extents to the segment. InnoDB can add to a large segment up to 4 extents at a time to ensure good sequentiality of data.

Some pages in the tablespace contain bitmaps of other pages, and therefore a few extents in an InnoDB tablespace cannot be allocated to segments as a whole, but only as individual pages.

When you ask for available free space in the tablespace by issuing a SHOW TABLE STATUS, InnoDB reports the extents that are definitely free in the tablespace. InnoDB always reserves some extents for clean-up and other internal purposes; these reserved extents are not included in the free space.

When you delete data from a table, InnoDB contracts the corresponding B-tree indexes. It depends on the pattern of deletes whether that frees individual pages or extents to the tablespace, so that the freed space becomes available for other users. Dropping a table or deleting all rows from it is guaranteed to release the space to other users, but remember that deleted rows are physically removed only in an (automatic) purge operation after they are no longer needed for transaction rollbacks or consistent reads.

15.14.4. Defragmenting a Table

If there are random insertions into or deletions from the indexes of a table, the indexes may become fragmented. Fragmentation means that the physical ordering of the index pages on the disk is not close to the index ordering of the records on the pages, or that there are many unused pages in the 64-page blocks that were allocated to the index.

A symptom of fragmentation is that a table takes more space than it “should” take. How much that is exactly, is difficult to determine. All InnoDB data and indexes are stored in B-trees, and their fill factor may vary from 50% to 100%. Another symptom of fragmentation is that a table scan such as:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t WHERE a_non_indexed_column <> 12345;

takes more time than it “should” take. (In the query above we are “fooling” the SQL optimizer into scanning the clustered index, rather than a secondary index.) Most disks can read 10 to 50 MB/s, which can be used to estimate how fast a table scan should run.

It can speed up index scans if you periodically perform a “nullALTER TABLE operation:

ALTER TABLE tbl_name ENGINE=INNODB

That causes MySQL to rebuild the table. Another way to perform a defragmention operation is to use mysqldump to dump the table to a text file, drop the table, and reload it from the dump file.

If the insertions to an index are always ascending and records are deleted only from the end, the InnoDB filespace management algorithm guarantees that fragmentation in the index does not occur.

15.15. InnoDB Error Handling

Error handling in InnoDB is not always the same as specified in the SQL standard. According to the standard, any error during an SQL statement should cause the rollback of that statement. InnoDB sometimes rolls back only part of the statement, or the whole transaction. The following items describe how InnoDB performs error handling:

  • If you run out of file space in the tablespace, you get the MySQL Table is full error and InnoDB rolls back the SQL statement.

  • A transaction deadlock causes InnoDB to roll back the entire transaction. In the case of a lock wait timeout, InnoDB also rolls back the entire transaction before MySQL 5.0.13; as of 5.0.13, InnoDB rolls back only the most recent SQL statement.

    When a transaction rollback occurs due to a deadlock or lock wait timeout, it cancels the effect of the statements in the transaction. But if the transaction was begun with a START TRANSACTION or BEGIN statement, it does not cancel that statement. Further SQL statements become part of the transaction until the occurrence of COMMIT, ROLLBACK, or some SQL statement that causes an implicit commit.

  • A duplicate-key error rolls back the SQL statement, if you have not specified the IGNORE option in your statement.

  • A row too long error rolls back the SQL statement.

  • Other errors are mostly detected by the MySQL layer of code (above the InnoDB storage engine level), and they roll back the corresponding SQL statement. Locks are not released in a rollback of a single SQL statement.

During implicit rollbacks, as well as during the execution of an explicit ROLLBACK SQL command, SHOW PROCESSLIST displays Rolling back in the State column for the relevant connection.

15.15.1. InnoDB Error Codes

The following is a non-exhaustive list of common InnoDB-specific errors that you may encounter, with information about why each occurs and how to resolve the problem.

  • 1005 (ER_CANT_CREATE_TABLE)

    Cannot create table. If the error message string refers to errno 150, table creation failed because a foreign key constraint was not correctly formed.

  • 1016 (ER_CANT_OPEN_FILE)

    Cannot find the InnoDB table from the InnoDB data files though the .frm file for the table exists. See Section 15.17.1, “Troubleshooting InnoDB Data Dictionary Operations”.

  • 1114 (ER_RECORD_FILE_FULL)

    InnoDB has run out of free space in the tablespace. You should reconfigure the tablespace to add a new data file.

  • 1205 (ER_LOCK_WAIT_TIMEOUT)

    Lock wait timeout expired. Transaction was rolled back.

  • 1213 (ER_LOCK_DEADLOCK)

    Transaction deadlock. You should rerun the transaction.

  • 1216 (ER_NO_REFERENCED_ROW)

    You are trying to add a row but there is no parent row, and a foreign key constraint fails. You should add the parent row first.

  • 1217 (ER_ROW_IS_REFERENCED)

    You are trying to delete a parent row that has children, and a foreign key constraint fails. You should delete the children first.

15.15.2. Operating System Error Codes

To print the meaning of an operating system error number, use the perror program that comes with the MySQL distribution.

The following table provides a list of some common Linux system error codes. For a more complete list, see Linux source code.

  • 1 (EPERM)

    Operation not permitted

  • 2 (ENOENT)

    No such file or directory

  • 3 (ESRCH)

    No such process

  • 4 (EINTR)

    Interrupted system call

  • 5 (EIO)

    I/O error

  • 6 (ENXIO)

    No such device or address

  • 7 (E2BIG)

    Arg list too long

  • 8 (ENOEXEC)

    Exec format error

  • 9 (EBADF)

    Bad file number

  • 10 (ECHILD)

    No child processes

  • 11 (EAGAIN)

    Try again

  • 12 (ENOMEM)

    Out of memory

  • 13 (EACCES)

    Permission denied

  • 14 (EFAULT)

    Bad address

  • 15 (ENOTBLK)

    Block device required

  • 16 (EBUSY)

    Device or resource busy

  • 17 (EEXIST)

    File exists

  • 18 (EXDEV)

    Cross-device link

  • 19 (ENODEV)

    No such device

  • 20 (ENOTDIR)

    Not a directory

  • 21 (EISDIR)

    Is a directory

  • 22 (EINVAL)

    Invalid argument

  • 23 (ENFILE)

    File table overflow

  • 24 (EMFILE)

    Too many open files

  • 25 (ENOTTY)

    Inappropriate ioctl for device

  • 26 (ETXTBSY)

    Text file busy

  • 27 (EFBIG)

    File too large

  • 28 (ENOSPC)

    No space left on device

  • 29 (ESPIPE)

    Illegal seek

  • 30 (EROFS)

    Read-only file system

  • 31 (EMLINK)

    Too many links

The following table provides a list of some common Windows system error codes. For a complete list see the Microsoft website.

  • 1 (ERROR_INVALID_FUNCTION)

    Incorrect function.

  • 2 (ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)

    The system cannot find the file specified.

  • 3 (ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND)

    The system cannot find the path specified.

  • 4 (ERROR_TOO_MANY_OPEN_FILES)

    The system cannot open the file.

  • 5 (ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED)

    Access is denied.

  • 6 (ERROR_INVALID_HANDLE)

    The handle is invalid.

  • 7 (ERROR_ARENA_TRASHED)

    The storage control blocks were destroyed.

  • 8 (ERROR_NOT_ENOUGH_MEMORY)

    Not enough storage is available to process this command.

  • 9 (ERROR_INVALID_BLOCK)

    The storage control block address is invalid.

  • 10 (ERROR_BAD_ENVIRONMENT)

    The environment is incorrect.

  • 11 (ERROR_BAD_FORMAT)

    An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.

  • 12 (ERROR_INVALID_ACCESS)

    The access code is invalid.

  • 13 (ERROR_INVALID_DATA)

    The data is invalid.

  • 14 (ERROR_OUTOFMEMORY)

    Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.

  • 15 (ERROR_INVALID_DRIVE)

    The system cannot find the drive specified.

  • 16 (ERROR_CURRENT_DIRECTORY)

    The directory cannot be removed.

  • 17 (ERROR_NOT_SAME_DEVICE)

    The system cannot move the file to a different disk drive.

  • 18 (ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES)

    There are no more files.

  • 19 (ERROR_WRITE_PROTECT)

    The media is write protected.

  • 20 (ERROR_BAD_UNIT)

    The system cannot find the device specified.

  • 21 (ERROR_NOT_READY)

    The device is not ready.

  • 22 (ERROR_BAD_COMMAND)

    The device does not recognize the command.

  • 23 (ERROR_CRC)

    Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

  • 24 (ERROR_BAD_LENGTH)

    The program issued a command but the command length is incorrect.

  • 25 (ERROR_SEEK)

    The drive cannot locate a specific area or track on the disk.

  • 26 (ERROR_NOT_DOS_DISK)

    The specified disk or diskette cannot be accessed.

  • 27 (ERROR_SECTOR_NOT_FOUND)

    The drive cannot find the sector requested.

  • 28 (ERROR_OUT_OF_PAPER)

    The printer is out of paper.

  • 29 (ERROR_WRITE_FAULT)

    The system cannot write to the specified device.

  • 30 (ERROR_READ_FAULT)

    The system cannot read from the specified device.

  • 31 (ERROR_GEN_FAILURE)

    A device attached to the system is not functioning.

  • 32 (ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION)

    The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

  • 33 (ERROR_LOCK_VIOLATION)

    The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.

  • 34 (ERROR_WRONG_DISK)

    The wrong diskette is in the drive. Insert %2 (Volume Serial Number: %3) into drive %1.

  • 36 (ERROR_SHARING_BUFFER_EXCEEDED)

    Too many files opened for sharing.

  • 38 (ERROR_HANDLE_EOF)

    Reached the end of the file.

  • 39 (ERROR_HANDLE_DISK_FULL)

    The disk is full.

  • 87 (ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER)

    The parameter is incorrect. (If you get this error on Windows, and you have set innodb_file_per_table in my.cnf or my.ini, then add the line innodb_flush_method=unbuffered to your my.cnf or my.ini file.)

  • 112 (ERROR_DISK_FULL)

    The disk is full.

  • 123 (ERROR_INVALID_NAME)

    The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.

  • 1450 (ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES)

    Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.

15.16. Restrictions on InnoDB Tables

  • A table cannot contain more than 1000 columns.

  • The internal maximum key length is 3500 bytes, but MySQL itself restricts this to 1024 bytes.

  • The maximum row length, except for VARCHAR, BLOB and TEXT columns, is slightly less than half of a database 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 also BLOB and TEXT columns, must be less than 4GB. InnoDB stores the first 768 bytes of a VARCHAR, BLOB, or TEXT column in the row, and the rest into separate pages.

  • Although InnoDB supports row sizes larger than 65535 internally, you cannot define a row containing VARCHAR columns with a combined size larger than 65535:

    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));
    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
    
  • On some older operating systems, data files must be less than 2GB.

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

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

  • InnoDB tables do not support FULLTEXT indexes.

  • InnoDB tables do not support spatial column types.

  • ANALYZE TABLE counts cardinality by doing eight random dives to each of the index trees and updating index cardinality estimates accordingly. Note that because these are only estimates, repeated runs of ANALYZE TABLE may produce different numbers. This makes ANALYZE TABLE fast on InnoDB tables but not 100% accurate as it doesn't take all rows into account.

    MySQL uses index cardinality estimates only in join optimization. If some join is not optimized in the right way, you may try using ANALYZE TABLE. In the few cases that ANALYZE TABLE doesn't produce values good enough for your particular tables, you can use FORCE INDEX with your queries to force the usage of a particular index, or set max_seeks_for_key to ensure that MySQL prefers index lookups over table scans. See Section 5.3.3, “Server System Variables”. See Section A.6, “Optimizer-Related Issues”.

  • On Windows, InnoDB always stores database and table names internally in lowercase. To move databases in binary format from Unix to Windows or from Windows to Unix, you should have all database and table names in lowercase.

  • Warning: Do not convert MySQL system tables in the mysql database from MyISAM to InnoDB tables! This is an unsupported operation. If you do this, MySQL does not restart until you restore the old system tables from a backup or re-generate them with the mysql_install_db script.

  • InnoDB does not keep an internal count of rows in a table. (This would actually be somewhat complicated because of multi-versioning.) To process a SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t statement, InnoDB must scan an index of the table, which takes some time if the index is not entirely in the buffer pool. To get a fast count, you have to use a counter table you create yourself and let your application update it according to the inserts and deletes it does. If your table does not change often, using the MySQL query cache is a good solution. SHOW TABLE STATUS also can be used if an approximate row count is sufficient. See Section 15.11, “InnoDB Performance Tuning Tips”.

  • For an AUTO_INCREMENT column, you must always define an index for the table, and that index must contain just the AUTO_INCREMENT column. In MyISAM tables, the AUTO_INCREMENT column may be part of a multi-column index.

  • In MySQL 5.0 before MySQL 5.0.3, InnoDB does not support the AUTO_INCREMENT table option for setting the initial sequence value in a CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE statement. To set the value with InnoDB, insert a dummy row with a value one less and delete that dummy row, or insert the first row with an explicit value specified.

  • When you restart the MySQL server, InnoDB may reuse an old value for an AUTO_INCREMENT column (that is, a value that was assigned to an old transaction that was rolled back).

  • When an AUTO_INCREMENT column runs out of values, InnoDB wraps a BIGINT to -9223372036854775808 and BIGINT UNSIGNED to 1. However, BIGINT values have 64 bits, so do note that if you were to insert one million rows per second, it would still take nearly three hundred thousand years before BIGINT reached its upper bound. With all other integer type columns, a duplicate-key error results. This is similar to how MyISAM works, because it is mostly general MySQL behavior and not about any storage engine in particular.

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

  • TRUNCATE tbl_name is mapped to DELETE FROM tbl_name for InnoDB and doesn't reset the AUTO_INCREMENT counter.

  • 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.

  • In MySQL 5.0, the MySQL LOCK TABLES operation acquires two locks on each table if innodb_table_locks=1, with 1 being the default.) In addition to a table lock on the MySQL layer, it also acquires an InnoDB table lock. Older versions of MySQL 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.

  • 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.

  • Sometimes it would be useful to lock further tables in the course of a transaction. Unfortunately, LOCK TABLES in MySQL performs an implicit COMMIT and UNLOCK TABLES. An InnoDB variant of LOCK TABLES has been planned that can be executed in the middle of a transaction.

  • The LOAD TABLE FROM MASTER statement for setting up replication slave servers does not yet work for InnoDB tables. A workaround is to alter the table to MyISAM on the master, do then the load, and after that alter the master table back to InnoDB.

  • The default database page size in InnoDB is 16KB. By recompiling the code, you can set it to values ranging from 8KB to 64KB. You have to update the values of UNIV_PAGE_SIZE and UNIV_PAGE_SIZE_SHIFT in the univ.i source file.

  • In MySQL 5.0, triggers are not activated by cascaded foreign key actions.

15.17. InnoDB Troubleshooting

  • A general rule is that when an operation fails or you suspect a bug, you should look at the MySQL server error log, which typically has a name something like hostname.err, or possibly mysql.err on Windows.

  • When troubleshooting, it is usually best to run the MySQL server from the command prompt, rather than through the mysqld_safe wrapper or as a Windows service. You can then see what mysqld prints to the console, and so have a better grasp of what is going on. On Windows, you must start the server with the --console option to direct the output to the console window.

  • Use the InnoDB Monitors to obtain information about a problem. If the problem is performance-related, or your server appears to be hung, you should use innodb_monitor to print information about the internal state of InnoDB. If the problem is with locks, use innodb_lock_monitor. If the problem is in creation of tables or other data dictionary operations, use innodb_table_monitor to print the contents of the InnoDB internal data dictionary.

  • If you suspect that a table is corrupt, run CHECK TABLE on that table.

15.17.1. Troubleshooting InnoDB Data Dictionary Operations

A specific issue with tables is that the MySQL server keeps data dictionary information in .frm files it stores in the database directories, while InnoDB also stores the information into its own data dictionary inside the tablespace files. If you move .frm files around, or if the server crashes in the middle of a data dictionary operation, the .frm files may end up out of sync with InnoDB's internal data dictionary.

A symptom of an out-of-sync data dictionary is that a CREATE TABLE statement fails. If this occurs, you should look in the server's error log. If the log says that the table already exists inside the InnoDB internal data dictionary, you have an orphaned table inside the InnoDB tablespace files that has no corresponding .frm file. The error message looks like this:

InnoDB: Error: table test/parent already exists in InnoDB internal
InnoDB: data dictionary. Have you deleted the .frm file
InnoDB: and not used DROP TABLE? Have you used DROP DATABASE
InnoDB: for InnoDB tables in MySQL version <= 3.23.43?
InnoDB: See the Restrictions section of the InnoDB manual.
InnoDB: You can drop the orphaned table inside InnoDB by
InnoDB: creating an InnoDB table with the same name in another
InnoDB: database and moving the .frm file to the current database.
InnoDB: Then MySQL thinks the table exists, and DROP TABLE will
InnoDB: succeed.

You can drop the orphaned table by following the instructions given in the error message. If you are still unable to use DROP TABLE successfully, the problem may be due to name completion in the mysql client. To work around this, start the mysql client with the --disable-auto-rehash option and try DROP TABLE again. (With name completion on, mysql tries to construct a list of table names, which doesn't work when a problem such as just described exists.)

Another symptom of an out-of-sync data dictionary is that MySQL prints an error that it cannot open a .InnoDB file:

ERROR 1016: Can't open file: 'child2.InnoDB'. (errno: 1)

In the error log you can find a message like this:

InnoDB: Cannot find table test/child2 from the internal data dictionary
InnoDB: of InnoDB though the .frm file for the table exists. Maybe you
InnoDB: have deleted and recreated InnoDB data files but have forgotten
InnoDB: to delete the corresponding .frm files of InnoDB tables?

This means that there is an orphaned .frm file without a corresponding table inside InnoDB. You can drop the orphaned .frm file by deleting it manually.

If MySQL crashes in the middle of an ALTER TABLE operation, you may end up with an orphaned temporary table inside the InnoDB tablespace. Using innodb_table_monitor you can see listed a table whose name is #sql-.... In MySQL 5.0, you can perform SQL statements on tables whose name contains the character ‘#’ if you enclose the name in backticks. Thus, you can drop such an orphaned table like any other orphaned table using the method described above. Note that to copy or rename a file in the Unix shell, you need to put the file name in double quotes if the file name contains ‘#’.