There are times when what you have is a partially running database and a bunch of backup innodb tablespace files (the .ibd files). If you're using innodb_file_per_table, then you have a separate .ibd file for each InnoDB table.

Now, you have your running database with a bunch of tables, and you want to replace some of them with the backup .ibd files. According to the MySQL docs, you'd do this:

1. ALTER TABLE foo DISCARD TABLESPACE; (this deletes the current .ibd file)
2. copy the old .ibd file into your database directory
3. ALTER TABLE foo IMPORT TABLESPACE;
   

Assuming your .ibd file was from the same database and you did not drop the table and recreate it sometime between when you made the backup .ibd and now, this should work. Except... if …

Default partitioning

By default, Cluster will partition based on primary key

When adding rows to a table that’s using MySQL Cluster as the storage engine, each row is assigned to a partition where that partition is mastered by a particular data node in the Cluster. The best performance comes when all of the data required to satisfy a transaction is held within a single partition so that it can be satisfied within  a single data node rather than being bounced back and forth between multiple nodes where  extra latency will be introduced.

By default, Cluster partions the data by hashing the primary key. This is not always optimal.

For example, if we have 2 tables, the first using a single-column primary key (sub_id) and the second using a composite key (sub_id, service_name)…

mysql> …

At the January 2009 Boston User Group I presented a session on the new partitioning feature in MySQL 5.1. I go through how to define partitions, how partitioning makes queries faster, the different types of partitioning and when to use each type, and the restrictions and limitations of partitioning.

The slides are available at http://www.technocation.org/files/doc/2009_01_Partitioning.pdf. The 380.6 Mb .mov movie (1 hr 16 min) can be played directly in your browser at http://technocation.org/node/671/play or downloaded at http://technocation.org/node/671/download.

Notes:
The partitioning part of the MySQL Manual is at: …

In a nutshell: What’s New in MySQL 5.1.

Release notes: Changes in release 5.1.x (Production).

And yes, very early on (at about two minutes in), I talk about my take on Monty’s controversial post at Oops, we did it again.

To play the video directly, go to http://technocation.org/node/663/play. To download the 146 Mb video to your computer for offline playback, go to http://technocation.org/node/663/download. The slides …

I’m in the process of converting some very large data tables to partitioned tables. By “In the process” I mean “scripts are running as we speak and I’m monitoring what’s going on.” When I did this in our test environment (2 or 3 times to be sure), I got familiar with the information_schema.partitions table. There […]

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