I’ve used the OPTIMIZE command for a long time, in particular for disk space problems.

But I recently had a problem with this command and an auto-incremented table, you can reproduce this problem like that :

Create a table with an auto-incremented column :

mysql> use test
Database changed
mysql> create table test_optimize (id int(8) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, PRIMARY KEY (id)) engine=InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.09 sec)

mysql> insert into test_optimize values (1),(2),(3),(4);
Query OK, 4 rows affected (0.28 sec)
Records: 4  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

mysql> show table status like ‘test_optimize’\G
*************************** 1. row