If neither NULL nor NOT NULL is specified, the column is treated as though NULL had been specified.

An integer or floating-point column can have the additional attribute AUTO_INCREMENT. When you insert a value of NULL (recommended) or 0 into an indexed AUTO_INCREMENT column, the column is set to the next sequence value. Typically this is value+1, where value is the largest value for the column currently in the table. AUTO_INCREMENT sequences begin with 1.

To retrieve an AUTO_INCREMENT value after inserting a row, use the LAST_INSERT_ID() SQL function or the mysql_insert_id() C API function. See Section 11.11.3, “Information Functions”, and Section 27.2.3.37, “mysql_insert_id()”.

If the NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO SQL mode is enabled, you can store 0 in AUTO_INCREMENT columns as 0 without generating a new sequence value. See Section 5.1.6, “SQL Modes”.

For MyISAM tables, you can specify an AUTO_INCREMENT secondary column in a multiple-column key. See Section 3.6.9, “Using AUTO_INCREMENT”.

To make MySQL compatible with some ODBC applications, you can find the AUTO_INCREMENT value for the last inserted row with the following query:

SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE auto_col IS NULL

For information about InnoDB and AUTO_INCREMENT, see Section 13.5.6.3, “How AUTO_INCREMENT Handling Works in InnoDB”.

Character data types (CHAR, VARCHAR, TEXT) can include CHARACTER SET and COLLATE attributes to specify the character set and collation for the column. For details, see Section 9.1, “Character Set Support”. CHARSET is a synonym for CHARACTER SET. Example:

CREATE TABLE t (c CHAR(20) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin);

MySQL 6.0 interprets length specifications in character column definitions in characters. (Versions before MySQL 4.1 interpreted them in bytes.) Lengths for BINARY and VARBINARY are in bytes.

The DEFAULT clause specifies a default value for a column. With one exception, the default value must be a constant; it cannot be a function or an expression. This means, for example, that you cannot set the default for a date column to be the value of a function such as NOW() or CURRENT_DATE. The exception is that you can specify CURRENT_TIMESTAMP as the default for a TIMESTAMP column. See Section 10.3.1.1, “TIMESTAMP Properties”.

If a column definition includes no explicit DEFAULT value, MySQL determines the default value as described in Section 10.1.4, “Data Type Default Values”.

BLOB and TEXT columns cannot be assigned a default value.

CREATE TABLE fails if a date-valued default is not correct according to the NO_ZERO_IN_DATE SQL mode, even if strict SQL mode is not enabled. For example, c1 DATE DEFAULT '2010-00-00' causes CREATE TABLE to fail with Invalid default value for 'c1'.

A comment for a column can be specified with the COMMENT option, up to 1024 characters long. The comment is displayed by the SHOW CREATE TABLE and SHOW FULL COLUMNS statements.

It is also possible to specify a data storage format for individual columns of NDB tables using COLUMN_FORMAT. Allowable column formats are FIXED, DYNAMIC, and DEFAULT. FIXED is used to specify fixed-width storage, DYNAMIC allows the column to be variable-wdith, and DEFAULT causes the column to use fixed-width or variable-width storage as determined by the column's data type (possibly overridden by a ROW_FORMAT specifier).

For NDB tables, the default value for COLUMN_FORMAT is DEFAULT.

COLUMN_FORMAT has no effect on columns of tables using storage engines other than NDB.

For NDB tables, beginning with MySQL 5.2.5, it is also possible to specify whether the column is stored on disk or in memory by using a STORAGE clause. STORAGE DISK causes the column to be stored on disk, and STORAGE MEMORY causes in-memory storage to be used.

For NDB tables, the default is MEMORY.

The STORAGE clause has no effect on tables using storage engines other than NDB.

KEY is normally a synonym for INDEX. The key attribute PRIMARY KEY can also be specified as just KEY when given in a column definition. This was implemented for compatibility with other database systems.

A UNIQUE index creates a constraint such that all values in the index must be distinct. An error occurs if you try to add a new row with a key value that matches an existing row. For all engines, a UNIQUE index allows multiple NULL values for columns that can contain NULL.

A PRIMARY KEY is a unique index where all key columns must be defined as NOT NULL. If they are not explicitly declared as NOT NULL, MySQL declares them so implicitly (and silently). A table can have only one PRIMARY KEY. If you do not have a PRIMARY KEY and an application asks for the PRIMARY KEY in your tables, MySQL returns the first UNIQUE index that has no NULL columns as the PRIMARY KEY.

In InnoDB tables, having a long PRIMARY KEY wastes a lot of space. (See Section 13.5.13, “InnoDB Table and Index Structures”.)

In the created table, a PRIMARY KEY is placed first, followed by all UNIQUE indexes, and then the non-unique indexes. This helps the MySQL optimizer to prioritize which index to use and also more quickly to detect duplicated UNIQUE keys.

A PRIMARY KEY can be a multiple-column index. However, you cannot create a multiple-column index using the PRIMARY KEY key attribute in a column specification. Doing so only marks that single column as primary. You must use a separate PRIMARY KEY(index_col_name, ...) clause.

If a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE index consists of only one column that has an integer type, you can also refer to the column as _rowid in SELECT statements.

In MySQL, the name of a PRIMARY KEY is PRIMARY. For other indexes, if you do not assign a name, the index is assigned the same name as the first indexed column, with an optional suffix (_2, _3, ...) to make it unique. You can see index names for a table using SHOW INDEX FROM tbl_name. See Section 12.5.5.18, “SHOW INDEX Syntax”.

Some storage engines allow you to specify an index type when creating an index. The syntax for the index_type specifier is USING type_name.

Example:

CREATE TABLE lookup
  (id INT, INDEX USING BTREE (id))
  ENGINE = MEMORY;

The USING clause should be given after the column list.

index_option values specify additional options for an index. USING is one such option. For details about allowable index_option values, see Section 12.1.7, “CREATE INDEX Syntax”.

For more information about indexes, see Section 7.4.5, “How MySQL Uses Indexes”.

In MySQL 6.0, only the MyISAM, InnoDB, and MEMORY storage engines support indexes on columns that can have NULL values. In other cases, you must declare indexed columns as NOT NULL or an error results.

For CHAR, VARCHAR, BINARY, and VARBINARY columns, indexes can be created that use only the leading part of column values, using col_name(length) syntax to specify an index prefix length. BLOB and TEXT columns also can be indexed, but a prefix length must be given. Prefix lengths are given in characters for non-binary string types and in bytes for binary string types. That is, index entries consist of the first length characters of each column value for CHAR, VARCHAR, and TEXT columns, and the first length bytes of each column value for BINARY, VARBINARY, and BLOB columns. Indexing only a prefix of column values like this can make the index file much smaller. See Section 7.4.3, “Column Indexes”.

Only the MyISAM and InnoDB storage engines support indexing on BLOB and TEXT columns. For example:

CREATE TABLE test (blob_col BLOB, INDEX(blob_col(10)));

Prefixes can be up to 1000 bytes long (767 bytes for InnoDB tables). Note that prefix limits are measured in bytes, whereas the prefix length in CREATE TABLE statements is interpreted as number of characters for non-binary data types (CHAR, VARCHAR, TEXT). Take this into account when specifying a prefix length for a column that uses a multi-byte character set.

An index_col_name specification can end with ASC or DESC. These keywords are allowed for future extensions for specifying ascending or descending index value storage. Currently, they are parsed but ignored; index values are always stored in ascending order.

When you use ORDER BY or GROUP BY on a TEXT or BLOB column in a SELECT, the server sorts values using only the initial number of bytes indicated by the max_sort_length system variable. See Section 10.4.3, “The BLOB and TEXT Types”.

You can create special FULLTEXT indexes, which are used for full-text searches. Only the MyISAM storage engine supports FULLTEXT indexes. They can be created only from CHAR, VARCHAR, and TEXT columns. Indexing always happens over the entire column; column prefix indexing is not supported and any prefix length is ignored if specified. See Section 11.8, “Full-Text Search Functions”, for details of operation. A WITH PARSER clause can be specified as an index_option value to associate a parser plugin with the index if full-text indexing and searching operations need special handling. This clause is legal only for FULLTEXT indexes. See Section 30.2, “The MySQL Plugin Interface”, for details on creating plugins.

You can create SPATIAL indexes on spatial data types. Spatial types are supported only for MyISAM tables and indexed columns must be declared as NOT NULL. See Chapter 20, Spatial Extensions.

Index definitions can include an optional comment of up to 1024 characters.

InnoDB tables support checking of foreign key constraints. See Section 13.5, “The InnoDB Storage Engine”. Note that the FOREIGN KEY syntax in InnoDB is more restrictive than the syntax presented for the CREATE TABLE statement at the beginning of this section: The columns of the referenced table must always be explicitly named. InnoDB supports both ON DELETE and ON UPDATE actions on foreign keys. For the precise syntax, see Section 13.5.6.4, “FOREIGN KEY Constraints”.

For other storage engines, MySQL Server parses and ignores the FOREIGN KEY and REFERENCES syntax in CREATE TABLE statements. The CHECK clause is parsed but ignored by all storage engines. See Section 1.8.5.4, “Foreign Keys”.

There is a hard limit of 4096 columns per table, but the effective maximum may be less for a given table and depends on the factors discussed in Section D.8.2, “The Maximum Number of Columns Per Table”.

AUTO_INCREMENT

The initial AUTO_INCREMENT value for the table. In MySQL 6.0, this works for MyISAM, MEMORY, InnoDB, ARCHIVE and Falcon tables. To set the first auto-increment value for engines that do not support the AUTO_INCREMENT table option, insert a “dummy” row with a value one less than the desired value after creating the table, and then delete the dummy row.

For engines that support the AUTO_INCREMENT table option in CREATE TABLE statements, you can also use ALTER TABLE tbl_name AUTO_INCREMENT = N to reset the AUTO_INCREMENT value. The value cannot be set lower than the maximum value currently in the column.

AVG_ROW_LENGTH

An approximation of the average row length for your table. You need to set this only for large tables with variable-size rows.

When you create a MyISAM table, MySQL uses the product of the MAX_ROWS and AVG_ROW_LENGTH options to decide how big the resulting table is. If you don't specify either option, the maximum size for a table is 256TB of data by default. (If your operating system does not support files that large, table sizes are constrained by the file size limit.) If you want to keep down the pointer sizes to make the index smaller and faster and you don't really need big files, you can decrease the default pointer size by setting the myisam_data_pointer_size system variable. (See Section 5.1.3, “System Variables”.) If you want all your tables to be able to grow above the default limit and are willing to have your tables slightly slower and larger than necessary, you can increase the default pointer size by setting this variable. Setting the value to 7 allows table sizes up to 65,536TB.

[DEFAULT] CHARACTER SET

Specify a default character set for the table. CHARSET is a synonym for CHARACTER SET. If the character set name is DEFAULT, the database character set is used.

CHECKSUM

Set this to 1 if you want MySQL to maintain a live checksum for all rows (that is, a checksum that MySQL updates automatically as the table changes). This makes the table a little slower to update, but also makes it easier to find corrupted tables. The CHECKSUM TABLE statement reports the checksum. (MyISAM only.)

[DEFAULT] COLLATE

Specify a default collation for the table.

COMMENT

A comment for the table, up to 2048 characters long. (Before 5.2.4, the limit is 60 characters.)

CONNECTION

The connection string for a FEDERATED table.

DATA DIRECTORY, INDEX DIRECTORY

By using DATA DIRECTORY='directory' or INDEX DIRECTORY='directory' you can specify where the MyISAM storage engine should put a table's data file and index file. The directory must be the full pathname to the directory, not a relative path.

These options work only when you are not using the --skip-symbolic-links option. Your operating system must also have a working, thread-safe realpath() call. See Section 7.6.1.2, “Using Symbolic Links for Tables on Unix”, for more complete information.

If a MyISAM table is created with no DATA DIRECTORY option, the .MYD file is created in the database directory. By default, if MyISAM finds an existing .MYD file in this case, it overwrites it. The same applies to .MYI files for tables created with no INDEX DIRECTORY option. To suppress this behavior, start the server with the --keep_files_on_create option, in which case MyISAM will not overwrite existing files and returns an error instead.

If a MyISAM table is created with a DATA DIRECTORY or INDEX DIRECTORY option and an existing .MYD or .MYI file is found, MyISAM always returns an error. It will not overwrite a file in the specified directory.

DELAY_KEY_WRITE

Set this to 1 if you want to delay key updates for the table until the table is closed. See the description of the delay_key_write system variable in Section 5.1.3, “System Variables”. (MyISAM only.)

INSERT_METHOD

If you want to insert data into a MERGE table, you must specify with INSERT_METHOD the table into which the row should be inserted. INSERT_METHOD is an option useful for MERGE tables only. Use a value of FIRST or LAST to have inserts go to the first or last table, or a value of NO to prevent inserts. See Section 13.7, “The MERGE Storage Engine”.

KEY_BLOCK_SIZE

This option provides a hint to the storage engine about the size in bytes to use for index key blocks. The engine is allowed to change the value if necessary. A value of 0 indicates that the default value should be used. Individual index definitions can specify a KEY_BLOCK_SIZE value of their own to override the table value.

MAX_ROWS

The maximum number of rows you plan to store in the table. This is not a hard limit, but rather a hint to the storage engine that the table must be able to store at least this many rows.

MIN_ROWS

The minimum number of rows you plan to store in the table.

PACK_KEYS

PACK_KEYS takes effect only with MyISAM tables. Set this option to 1 if you want to have smaller indexes. This usually makes updates slower and reads faster. Setting the option to 0 disables all packing of keys. Setting it to DEFAULT tells the storage engine to pack only long CHAR, VARCHAR, BINARY, or VARBINARY columns.

If you do not use PACK_KEYS, the default is to pack strings, but not numbers. If you use PACK_KEYS=1, numbers are packed as well.

When packing binary number keys, MySQL uses prefix compression:

This means that if you have many equal keys on two consecutive rows, all following “same” keys usually only take two bytes (including the pointer to the row). Compare this to the ordinary case where the following keys takes storage_size_for_key + pointer_size (where the pointer size is usually 4). Conversely, you get a significant benefit from prefix compression only if you have many numbers that are the same. If all keys are totally different, you use one byte more per key, if the key is not a key that can have NULL values. (In this case, the packed key length is stored in the same byte that is used to mark if a key is NULL.)

PASSWORD

This option is unused. If you have a need to scramble your .frm files and make them unusable to any other MySQL server, please contact our sales department.

RAID_TYPE

RAID support has been removed as of MySQL 5.0. For information on RAID, see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/create-table.html.

ROW_FORMAT

Defines how the rows should be stored. For MyISAM tables, the option value can be FIXED or DYNAMIC for static or variable-length row format. myisampack sets the type to COMPRESSED. See Section 13.4.3, “MyISAM Table Storage Formats”.

For InnoDB tables, rows are stored in compact format (ROW_FORMAT=COMPACT) by default. The non-compact format used in older versions of MySQL can still be requested by specifying ROW_FORMAT=REDUNDANT.

UNION

UNION is used when you want to access a collection of identical MyISAM tables as one. This works only with MERGE tables. See Section 13.7, “The MERGE Storage Engine”.

You must have SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE privileges for the tables you map to a MERGE table.

HASH(expr): Hashes one or more columns to create a key for placing and locating rows. expr is an expression using one or more table columns. This can be any legal MySQL expression (including MySQL functions) that yields a single integer value. For example, these are all valid CREATE TABLE statements using PARTITION BY HASH:

CREATE TABLE t1 (col1 INT, col2 CHAR(5))
    PARTITION BY HASH(col1);

CREATE TABLE t1 (col1 INT, col2 CHAR(5))
    PARTITION BY HASH( ORD(col2) );

CREATE TABLE t1 (col1 INT, col2 CHAR(5), col3 DATETIME)
    PARTITION BY HASH ( YEAR(col3) );

You may not use either VALUES LESS THAN or VALUES IN clauses with PARTITION BY HASH.

PARTITION BY HASH uses the remainder of expr divided by the number of partitions (that is, the modulus). For examples and additional information, see Section 19.2.3, “HASH Partitioning”.

The LINEAR keyword entails a somewhat different algorithm. In this case, the number of the partition in which a row is stored is calculated as the result of one or more logical AND operations. For discussion and examples of linear hashing, see Section 19.2.3.1, “LINEAR HASH Partitioning”.

KEY(column_list): This is similar to HASH, except that MySQL supplies the hashing function so as to guarantee an even data distribution. The column_list argument is simply a list of table columns. This example shows a simple table partitioned by key, with 4 partitions:

CREATE TABLE tk (col1 INT, col2 CHAR(5), col3 DATE)
    PARTITION BY KEY(col3)
    PARTITIONS 4;

For tables that are partitioned by key, you can employ linear partitioning by using the LINEAR keyword. This has the same effect as with tables that are partitioned by HASH. That is, the partition number is found using the & operator rather than the modulus (see Section 19.2.3.1, “LINEAR HASH Partitioning”, and Section 19.2.4, “KEY Partitioning”, for details). This example uses linear partitioning by key to distribute data between 5 partitions:

CREATE TABLE tk (col1 INT, col2 CHAR(5), col3 DATE)
    PARTITION BY LINEAR KEY(col3)
    PARTITIONS 5;

You may not use either VALUES LESS THAN or VALUES IN clauses with PARTITION BY KEY.

RANGE: In this case, expr shows a range of values using a set of VALUES LESS THAN operators. When using range partitioning, you must define at least one partition using VALUES LESS THAN. You cannot use VALUES IN with range partitioning.

VALUES LESS THAN can be used with either a literal value or an expression that evaluates to a single value.

Suppose that you have a table that you wish to partition on a column containing year values, according to the following scheme:

A table implementing such a partitioning scheme can be realized by the CREATE TABLE statement shown here:

CREATE TABLE t1 (
    year_col  INT,
    some_data INT
)
PARTITION BY RANGE (year_col) (
    PARTITION p0 VALUES LESS THAN (1991),
    PARTITION p1 VALUES LESS THAN (1995),
    PARTITION p2 VALUES LESS THAN (1999),
    PARTITION p3 VALUES LESS THAN (2002),
    PARTITION p4 VALUES LESS THAN (2006),
    PARTITION p5 VALUES LESS THAN MAXVALUE
);

PARTITION ... VALUES LESS THAN ... statements work in a consecutive fashion. VALUES LESS THAN MAXVALUE works to specify “leftover” values that are greater than the maximum value otherwise specified.

Note that VALUES LESS THAN clauses work sequentially in a manner similar to that of the case portions of a switch ... case block (as found in many programming languages such as C, Java, and PHP). That is, the clauses must be arranged in such a way that the upper limit specified in each successive VALUES LESS THAN is greater than that of the previous one, with the one referencing MAXVALUE coming last of all in the list.

LIST(expr): This is useful when assigning partitions based on a table column with a restricted set of possible values, such as a state or country code. In such a case, all rows pertaining to a certain state or country can be assigned to a single partition, or a partition can be reserved for a certain set of states or countries. It is similar to RANGE, except that only VALUES IN may be used to specify allowable values for each partition.

VALUES IN is used with a list of values to be matched. For instance, you could create a partitioning scheme such as the following:

CREATE TABLE client_firms (
    id   INT,
    name VARCHAR(35)
)
PARTITION BY LIST (id) (
    PARTITION r0 VALUES IN (1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21),
    PARTITION r1 VALUES IN (2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22),
    PARTITION r2 VALUES IN (3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23),
    PARTITION r3 VALUES IN (4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24)
);

When using list partitioning, you must define at least one partition using VALUES IN. You cannot use VALUES LESS THAN with PARTITION BY LIST.

The number of partitions may optionally be specified with a PARTITIONS num clause, where num is the number of partitions. If both this clause and any PARTITION clauses are used, num must be equal to the total number of any partitions that are declared using PARTITION clauses.

A partition may optionally be divided into a number of subpartitions. This can be indicated by using the optional SUBPARTITION BY clause. Subpartitioning may be done by HASH or KEY. Either of these may be LINEAR. These work in the same way as previously described for the equivalent partitioning types. (It is not possible to subpartition by LIST or RANGE.)

The number of subpartitions can be indicated using the SUBPARTITIONS keyword followed by an integer value.

Rigorous checking of the value used in PARTITIONS or SUBPARTITIONS clauses is applied and this value must adhere to the following rules:

PARTITION partition_name: This specifies a logical name for the partition.

A VALUES clause: For range partitioning, each partition must include a VALUES LESS THAN clause; for list partitioning, you must specify a VALUES IN clause for each partition. This is used to determine which rows are to be stored in this partition. See the discussions of partitioning types in Chapter 19, Partitioning, for syntax examples.

An optional COMMENT clause may be used to specify a string that describes the partition. Example:

COMMENT = 'Data for the years previous to 1999'

DATA DIRECTORY and INDEX DIRECTORY may be used to indicate the directory where, respectively, the data and indexes for this partition are to be stored. Both the data_dir and the index_dir must be absolute system pathnames. Example:

CREATE TABLE th (id INT, name VARCHAR(30), adate DATE)
PARTITION BY LIST(YEAR(adate))
(
  PARTITION p1999 VALUES IN (1995, 1999, 2003)
    DATA DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/95/data'
    INDEX DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/95/idx',
  PARTITION p2000 VALUES IN (1996, 2000, 2004)
    DATA DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/96/data'
    INDEX DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/96/idx',
  PARTITION p2001 VALUES IN (1997, 2001, 2005)
    DATA DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/97/data'
    INDEX DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/97/idx',
  PARTITION p2000 VALUES IN (1998, 2002, 2006)
    DATA DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/98/data'
    INDEX DIRECTORY = '/var/appdata/98/idx'
);

DATA DIRECTORY and INDEX DIRECTORY behave in the same way as in the CREATE TABLE statement's table_option clause as used for MyISAM tables.

One data directory and one index directory may be specified per partition. If left unspecified, the data and indexes are stored by default in the table's database directory.

On Windows, the DATA DIRECTORY and INDEX DIRECTORY options are not supported for individual partitions or subpartitions. Beginning with MySQL 6.0.5, these options are ignored on Windows, except that a warning is generated. (Bug#30459)

MAX_ROWS and MIN_ROWS may be used to specify, respectively, the maximum and minimum number of rows to be stored in the partition. The values for max_number_of_rows and min_number_of_rows must be positive integers. As with the table-level options with the same names, these act only as “suggestions” to the server and are not hard limits.

The optional TABLESPACE clause may be used to designate a tablespace for the partition. Used for MySQL Cluster and Falcon only.

The partitioning handler accepts a [STORAGE] ENGINE option for both PARTITION and SUBPARTITION. Currently, the only way in which this can be used is to set all partitions or all subpartitions to the same storage engine, and an attempt to set different storage engines for partitions or subpartitions in the same table will give rise to the error ERROR 1469 (HY000): The mix of handlers in the partitions is not allowed in this version of MySQL. We expect to lift this restriction on partitioning in a future MySQL release.

The NODEGROUP option can be used to make this partition act as part of the node group identified by node_group_id. This option is applicable only to MySQL Cluster.

The partition definition may optionally contain one or more subpartition_definition clauses. Each of these consists at a minimum of the SUBPARTITION name, where name is an identifier for the subpartition. Except for the replacement of the PARTITION keyword with SUBPARTITION, the syntax for a subpartition definition is identical to that for a partition definition.

Subpartitioning must be done by HASH or KEY, and can be done only on RANGE or LIST partitions. See Section 19.2.5, “Subpartitioning”.