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17.1.5.2 Limits and Differences of MySQL Cluster from Standard MySQL Limits »
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17.1.5.1. Noncompliance with SQL Syntax in MySQL Cluster

Some SQL statements relating to certain MySQL features produce errors when used with NDB tables, as described in the following list:

  • Temporary tables.  Temporary tables are not supported. Trying either to create a temporary table that uses the NDB storage engine or to alter an existing temporary table to use NDB fails with the error Table storage engine 'ndbcluster' does not support the create option 'TEMPORARY'.

  • Indexes and keys in NDB tables.  Keys and indexes on MySQL Cluster tables are subject to the following limitations:

    • Column width.  Attempting to create an index on an NDB table column whose width is greater than 3072 bytes succeeds, but only the first 3072 bytes are actually used for the index. In such cases, a warning Specified key was too long; max key length is 3072 bytes is issued, and a SHOW CREATE TABLE statement shows the length of the index as 3072.

    • TEXT and BLOB columns.  You cannot create indexes on NDB table columns that use any of the TEXT or BLOB data types.

    • FULLTEXT indexes.  The NDB storage engine does not support FULLTEXT indexes, which are possible for MyISAM tables only.

      However, you can create indexes on VARCHAR columns of NDB tables.

    • Prefixes.  There are no prefix indexes; only entire columns can be indexed. (The size of an NDB column index is always the same as the width of the column in bytes, up to and including 3072 bytes, as described earlier in this section. Also see Section 17.1.5.6, “Unsupported or Missing Features in MySQL Cluster”, for additional information.)

    • BIT columns.  A BIT column cannot be a primary key, unique key, or index, nor can it be part of a composite primary key, unique key, or index.

    • AUTO_INCREMENT columns.  Like other MySQL storage engines, the NDB storage engine can handle a maximum of one AUTO_INCREMENT column per table. However, in the case of a Cluster table with no explicit primary key, an AUTO_INCREMENT column is automatically defined and used as a “hidden” primary key. For this reason, you cannot define a table that has an explicit AUTO_INCREMENT column unless that column is also declared using the PRIMARY KEY option. Attempting to create a table with an AUTO_INCREMENT column that is not the table's primary key, and using the NDB storage engine, fails with an error.

  • MySQL Cluster and geometry data types.  Geometry datatypes (WKT and WKB) are supported in NDB tables in MySQL 5.1 (including MySQL Cluster NDB 6.X and 7.X through 7.1). However, spatial indexes are not supported.

  • Creating NDBCLUSTER tables with user-defined partitioning.  Support for user-defined partitioning for MySQL Cluster in MySQL 5.1 (including MySQL Cluster NDB 6.X and 7.X through 7.1) is restricted to [LINEAR] KEY partitioning. Beginning with MySQL 5.1.12, using any other partitioning type with ENGINE=NDB or ENGINE=NDBCLUSTER in a CREATE TABLE statement results in an error.

    Default partitioning scheme.  As of MySQL 5.1.6, all MySQL Cluster tables are by default partitioned by KEY using the table's primary key as the partitioning key. If no primary key is explicitly set for the table, the “hidden” primary key automatically created by the NDBCLUSTER storage engine is used instead. For additional discussion of these and related issues, see Section 18.2.4, “KEY Partitioning”.

    Beginning with MySQL Cluster NDB 6.2.18, MySQL Cluster NDB 6.3.25, and MySQL Cluster NDB 7.0.6, CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE statements that would cause a user-partitioned NDBCLUSTER table not to meet either or both of the following two requirements are disallowed, and fail with an error (Bug#40709):

    1. The table must have an explicit primary key.

    2. All columns listed in the table's partitioning expression must be part of the primary key.

    Exception.  If a user-partitioned NDBCLUSTER table is created using an empty column-list (that is, using PARTITION BY [LINEAR] KEY()), then no explicit primary key is required.

    Maximum number of partitions for NDBCLUSTER tables.  The maximum number of partitions that can defined for a NDBCLUSTER table when employing user-defined partitioning is 8 per node group. (See Section 17.1.2, “MySQL Cluster Nodes, Node Groups, Replicas, and Partitions”, for more information about MySQL Cluster node groups.

    DROP PARTITION not supported.  It is not possible to drop partitions from NDB tables using ALTER TABLE ... DROP PARTITION. The other partitioning extensions to ALTER TABLE — ADD PARTITION, REORGANIZE PARTITION, and COALESCE PARTITION — are supported for Cluster tables, but use copying and so are not optimised. See Section 18.3.1, “Management of RANGE and LIST Partitions” and Section 12.1.7, “ALTER TABLE Syntax”.

  • Row-based replication.  When using row-based replication with MySQL Cluster, binary logging cannot be disabled. That is, the NDB storage engine ignores the value of sql_log_bin. (Bug#16680)


User Comments

Posted by Matthew Montgomery on May 22 2009 1:50pm[Delete] [Edit]

As of 5.1.23-ndb-6.3.8 two new session variables exist which allow NDB to create pseudo-temporary tables.

These tables will be visible to all user sessions and will be present until the cluster restarts.

ndb_table_no_logging=[1|0] controls weather tables created within that session will be REDO logged or checkpointed to disk. This makes the persistence of these NDB table behave similarly to MEMORY engine where are truncated on cluster restart.
ndb_table_temporary=[1|0] controls weather any schema file will be created in the cluster. This option behaves similarly to ndb_table_no_logging except that it will cause no schema file to be created, thus when the cluster restarts it will be completely removed.

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