Fast, Reliable, Proven transactional storage for MySQL

InnoBase Plugin

The InnoDB Plugin for MySQL exploits the “pluggable storage engine” architecture of MySQL, to permit users to replace the “built-in” version of InnoDB in MySQL 5.1 with a new release of InnoDB that offers new features, improved performance, enhanced reliability and new capabilities for flexibility and ease of use.

InnoDB Plugin 1.0 for MySQL 5.1 introduces the following new features:

  • Fast index creation: add or drop indexes without copying the data
  • Data compression: shrink tables, to significantly reduce storage and i/o
  • New row format: fully off-page storage of long BLOB, TEXT, and VARCHAR columns
  • File format management: protects upward and downward compatibility
  • INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables: information about compression and locking
  • Other changes for flexibility, ease of use and reliability
    • Dynamic control of innodb_file_per_table
    • TRUNCATE TABLE re-creates the *.ibd file to reclaim space
    • “Strict mode” to prevent mistakes

About the InnoDB Plugin:

  • Available here in source and binary (for most platforms)
  • Licensed under the GPLv2, just like MySQL
  • Early Adopter release available for MySQL 5.1.23 or later releases of 5.1; 6.0 support TBA
  • Supports temporary use (can downgrade to standard InnoDB)
  • Supported via forums.innodb.com
  • Dynamically INSTALLed on Linux and FreeBSD (other platforms TBA), without compiling from source or relinking MySQL

Full documentation is available here.