- 17.12.1 Online DDL Operations
- 17.12.2 Online DDL Performance and Concurrency
- 17.12.3 Online DDL Space Requirements
- 17.12.4 Online DDL Memory Management
- 17.12.5 Configuring Parallel Threads for Online DDL Operations
- 17.12.6 Simplifying DDL Statements with Online DDL
- 17.12.7 Online DDL Failure Conditions
- 17.12.8 Online DDL Limitations
The online DDL feature provides support for instant and in-place table alterations and concurrent DML. Benefits of this feature include:
Improved responsiveness and availability in busy production environments, where making a table unavailable for minutes or hours is not practical.
For in-place operations, the ability to adjust the balance between performance and concurrency during DDL operations using the
LOCK
clause. See The LOCK clause.Less disk space usage and I/O overhead than the table-copy method.
Typically, you do not need to do anything special to enable online DDL. By default, MySQL performs the operation instantly or in place, as permitted, with as little locking as possible.
You can control aspects of a DDL operation using the
ALGORITHM
and LOCK
clauses of
the ALTER TABLE
statement. These
clauses are placed at the end of the statement, separated from the
table and column specifications by commas. For example:
ALTER TABLE tbl_name ADD PRIMARY KEY (column), ALGORITHM=INPLACE;
The LOCK
clause may be used for operations that
are performed in place and is useful for fine-tuning the degree of
concurrent access to the table during operations. Only
LOCK=DEFAULT
is supported for operations that are
performed instantly. The ALGORITHM
clause is
primarily intended for performance comparisons and as a fallback to
the older table-copying behavior in case you encounter any issues.
For example:
To avoid accidentally making the table unavailable for reads, writes, or both, during an in-place
ALTER TABLE
operation, specify a clause on theALTER TABLE
statement such asLOCK=NONE
(permit reads and writes) orLOCK=SHARED
(permit reads). The operation halts immediately if the requested level of concurrency is not available.To compare performance between algorithms, run a statement with
ALGORITHM=INSTANT
,ALGORITHM=INPLACE
andALGORITHM=COPY
. You can also run a statement with theold_alter_table
configuration option enabled to force the use ofALGORITHM=COPY
.To avoid tying up the server with an
ALTER TABLE
operation that copies the table, includeALGORITHM=INSTANT
orALGORITHM=INPLACE
. The statement halts immediately if it cannot use the specified algorithm.