This is mostly a reflection on a limitation in InnoDB that, in my opinion, has persisted for too long. I founded while reviewing the Amarok media player. The player uses MySQL in the backend, embedded or regular server, so it makes for a great source of real life data.

The Issue

By default, Amarok uses MyISAM tables. This means that if it crashes or stops unexpectedly (a logout while playing music may cause this), the latest updates to the DB are all lost. So I've been looking into using InnoDB instead to avoid loosing my playlists or player statistics.

The Problem

The limitation that bothers me is this one: "Index key prefixes can be up to 767 bytes" which has been in place for several years.
Take this Amarok table for


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