If you get a duplicate-key error when using
ALTER TABLE
to change the
character set or collation of a character column, the cause is
either that the new column collation maps two keys to the same
value or that the table is corrupted. In the latter case, you
should run REPAIR TABLE
on the
table. REPAIR TABLE
works for
MyISAM
, ARCHIVE
, and
CSV
tables.
If you use ALTER TABLE
on a
transactional table or if you are using Windows,
ALTER TABLE
unlocks the table
if you had done a
LOCK
TABLE
on it. This is done because
InnoDB
and these operating systems cannot
drop a table that is in use.