Mysql：The Merge Storage Engine：类【union all】联合视图存储引擎

 

16.7 The MERGE Storage Engine

16.7.1 MERGE Table Advantages and Disadvantages

16.7.2 MERGE Table Problems

The MERGE storage engine, also known as the MRG_MyISAM engine, is a collection of identical MyISAM tables that can be used as one. “Identical” means that all tables have identical column data types and index information. You cannot merge MyISAM tables in which the columns are listed in a different order, do not have exactly the same data types in corresponding columns, or have the indexes in different order. However, any or all of the MyISAM tables can be compressed with myisampack. See Section 4.6.6, “myisampack — Generate Compressed, Read-Only MyISAM Tables”. Differences between tables such as these do not matter:

• Names of corresponding columns and indexes can differ.

• Comments for tables, columns, and indexes can differ.

• Table options such as AVG_ROW_LENGTH, MAX_ROWS, or PACK_KEYS can differ.

An alternative to a MERGE table is a partitioned table, which stores partitions of a single table in separate files and enables some operations to be performed more efficiently. For more information, see Chapter 23, Partitioning.

When you create a MERGE table, MySQL creates a .MRG file on disk that contains the names of the underlying MyISAM tables that should be used as one. The table format of the MERGE table is stored in the MySQL data dictionary. The underlying tables do not have to be in the same database as the MERGE table.

You can use SELECT, DELETE, UPDATE, and INSERT on MERGE tables. You must have SELECT, DELETE, and UPDATE privileges on the MyISAM tables that you map to a MERGE table.

Note

The use of MERGE tables entails the following security issue: If a user has access to MyISAM table t, that user can create a MERGE table m that accesses t. However, if the user's privileges on t are subsequently revoked, the user can continue to access t by doing so through m.

Use of DROP TABLE with a MERGE table drops only the MERGE specification. The underlying tables are not affected.

To create a MERGE table, you must specify a UNION=(list-of-tables) option that indicates which MyISAM tables to use. You can optionally specify an INSERT_METHOD option to control how inserts into the MERGE table take place. Use a value of FIRST or LAST to cause inserts to be made in the first or last underlying table, respectively. If you specify no INSERT_METHOD option or if you specify it with a value of NO, inserts into the MERGE table are not permitted and attempts to do so result in an error.

The following example shows how to create a MERGE table:

CREATE TABLE t1 (
a INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
message CHAR(20)) ENGINE=MyISAM;
CREATE TABLE t2 (
a INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
message CHAR(20)) ENGINE=MyISAM;
INSERT INTO t1 (message) VALUES ('Testing'),('table'),('t1');
INSERT INTO t2 (message) VALUES ('Testing'),('table'),('t2');
CREATE TABLE total (
a INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
message CHAR(20), INDEX(a))
ENGINE=MERGE UNION=(t1,t2) INSERT_METHOD=LAST;

Column a is indexed as a PRIMARY KEY in the underlying MyISAM tables, but not in the MERGE table. There it is indexed but not as a PRIMARY KEY because a MERGE table cannot enforce uniqueness over the set of underlying tables. (Similarly, a column with a UNIQUE index in the underlying tables should be indexed in the MERGE table but not as a UNIQUE index.)

After creating the MERGE table, you can use it to issue queries that operate on the group of tables as a whole:

mysql> SELECT * FROM total;
+---+---------+
| a | message |
+---+---------+
| 1 | Testing |
| 2 | table   |
| 3 | t1      |
| 1 | Testing |
| 2 | table   |
| 3 | t2      |
+---+---------+

To remap a MERGE table to a different collection of MyISAM tables, you can use one of the following methods:

• DROP the MERGE table and re-create it.

• Use ALTER TABLE tbl_name UNION=(...) to change the list of underlying tables.

  It is also possible to use ALTER TABLE ... UNION=() (that is, with an empty UNION clause) to remove all of the underlying tables. However, in this case, the table is effectively empty and inserts fail because there is no underlying table to take new rows. Such a table might be useful as a template for creating new MERGE tables with CREATE TABLE ... LIKE.

The underlying table definitions and indexes must conform closely to the definition of the MERGE table. Conformance is checked when a table that is part of a MERGE table is opened, not when the MERGE table is created. If any table fails the conformance checks, the operation that triggered the opening of the table fails. This means that changes to the definitions of tables within a MERGE may cause a failure when the MERGE table is accessed. The conformance checks applied to each table are:

• The underlying table and the MERGE table must have the same number of columns.

• The column order in the underlying table and the MERGE table must match.

• Additionally, the specification for each corresponding column in the parent MERGE table and the underlying tables are compared and must satisfy these checks:

  • The column type in the underlying table and the MERGE table must be equal.

  • The column length in the underlying table and the MERGE table must be equal.

  • The column of the underlying table and the MERGE table can be NULL.

• The underlying table must have at least as many indexes as the MERGE table. The underlying table may have more indexes than the MERGE table, but cannot have fewer.

  Note

  A known issue exists where indexes on the same columns must be in identical order, in both the MERGE table and the underlying MyISAM table. See Bug #33653.

  Each index must satisfy these checks:

  • The index type of the underlying table and the MERGE table must be the same.

  • The number of index parts (that is, multiple columns within a compound index) in the index definition for the underlying table and the MERGE table must be the same.

  • For each index part:

    • Index part lengths must be equal.

    • Index part types must be equal.

    • Index part languages must be equal.

    • Check whether index parts can be NULL.

If a MERGE table cannot be opened or used because of a problem with an underlying table, CHECK TABLE displays information about which table caused the problem.

Additional Resources

• A forum dedicated to the MERGE storage engine is available at https://forums.mysql.com/list.php?93.

16.7.1 MERGE Table Advantages and Disadvantages

MERGE tables can help you solve the following problems:

• Easily manage a set of log tables. For example, you can put data from different months into separate tables, compress some of them with myisampack, and then create a MERGE table to use them as one.

• Obtain more speed. You can split a large read-only table based on some criteria, and then put individual tables on different disks. A MERGE table structured this way could be much faster than using a single large table.

• Perform more efficient searches. If you know exactly what you are looking for, you can search in just one of the underlying tables for some queries and use a MERGE table for others. You can even have many different MERGE tables that use overlapping sets of tables.

• Perform more efficient repairs. It is easier to repair individual smaller tables that are mapped to a MERGE table than to repair a single large table.

• Instantly map many tables as one. A MERGE table need not maintain an index of its own because it uses the indexes of the individual tables. As a result, MERGE table collections are very fast to create or remap. (You must still specify the index definitions when you create a MERGE table, even though no indexes are created.)

• If you have a set of tables from which you create a large table on demand, you can instead create a MERGE table from them on demand. This is much faster and saves a lot of disk space.

• Exceed the file size limit for the operating system. Each MyISAM table is bound by this limit, but a collection of MyISAM tables is not.

• You can create an alias or synonym for a MyISAM table by defining a MERGE table that maps to that single table. There should be no really notable performance impact from doing this (only a couple of indirect calls and memcpy() calls for each read).

The disadvantages of MERGE tables are:

• You can use only identical MyISAM tables for a MERGE table.

• Some MyISAM features are unavailable in MERGE tables. For example, you cannot create FULLTEXT indexes on MERGE tables. (You can create FULLTEXT indexes on the underlying MyISAM tables, but you cannot search the MERGE table with a full-text search.)

• If the MERGE table is nontemporary, all underlying MyISAM tables must be nontemporary. If the MERGE table is temporary, the MyISAM tables can be any mix of temporary and nontemporary.

• MERGE tables use more file descriptors than MyISAM tables. If 10 clients are using a MERGE table that maps to 10 tables, the server uses (10 × 10) + 10 file descriptors. (10 data file descriptors for each of the 10 clients, and 10 index file descriptors shared among the clients.)

• Index reads are slower. When you read an index, the MERGE storage engine needs to issue a read on all underlying tables to check which one most closely matches a given index value. To read the next index value, the MERGE storage engine needs to search the read buffers to find the next value. Only when one index buffer is used up does the storage engine need to read the next index block. This makes MERGE indexes much slower on eq_ref searches, but not much slower on ref searches. For more information about eq_ref and ref, see Section 13.8.2, “EXPLAIN Statement”.

16.7.2 MERGE Table Problems

The following are known problems with MERGE tables:

• In versions of MySQL Server prior to 5.1.23, it was possible to create temporary merge tables with nontemporary child MyISAM tables.

  From versions 5.1.23, MERGE children were locked through the parent table. If the parent was temporary, it was not locked and so the children were not locked either. Parallel use of the MyISAM tables corrupted them.

• If you use ALTER TABLE to change a MERGE table to another storage engine, the mapping to the underlying tables is lost. Instead, the rows from the underlying MyISAM tables are copied into the altered table, which then uses the specified storage engine.

• The INSERT_METHOD table option for a MERGE table indicates which underlying MyISAM table to use for inserts into the MERGE table. However, use of the AUTO_INCREMENT table option for that MyISAM table has no effect for inserts into the MERGE table until at least one row has been inserted directly into the MyISAM table.

• A MERGE table cannot maintain uniqueness constraints over the entire table. When you perform an INSERT, the data goes into the first or last MyISAM table (as determined by the INSERT_METHOD option). MySQL ensures that unique key values remain unique within that MyISAM table, but not over all the underlying tables in the collection.

• Because the MERGE engine cannot enforce uniqueness over the set of underlying tables, REPLACE does not work as expected. The two key facts are:

  • REPLACE can detect unique key violations only in the underlying table to which it is going to write (which is determined by the INSERT_METHOD option). This differs from violations in the MERGE table itself.

  • If REPLACE detects a unique key violation, it will change only the corresponding row in the underlying table it is writing to; that is, the first or last table, as determined by the INSERT_METHOD option.

  Similar considerations apply for INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE.

• MERGE tables do not support partitioning. That is, you cannot partition a MERGE table, nor can any of a MERGE table's underlying MyISAM tables be partitioned.

• You should not use ANALYZE TABLE, REPAIR TABLE, OPTIMIZE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, DROP TABLE, DELETE without a WHERE clause, or TRUNCATE TABLE on any of the tables that are mapped into an open MERGE table. If you do so, the MERGE table may still refer to the original table and yield unexpected results. To work around this problem, ensure that no MERGE tables remain open by issuing a FLUSH TABLES statement prior to performing any of the named operations.

  The unexpected results include the possibility that the operation on the MERGE table will report table corruption. If this occurs after one of the named operations on the underlying MyISAM tables, the corruption message is spurious. To deal with this, issue a FLUSH TABLES statement after modifying the MyISAM tables.

• DROP TABLE on a table that is in use by a MERGE table does not work on Windows because the MERGE storage engine's table mapping is hidden from the upper layer of MySQL. Windows does not permit open files to be deleted, so you first must flush all MERGE tables (with FLUSH TABLES) or drop the MERGE table before dropping the table.

• The definition of the MyISAM tables and the MERGE table are checked when the tables are accessed (for example, as part of a SELECT or INSERT statement). The checks ensure that the definitions of the tables and the parent MERGE table definition match by comparing column order, types, sizes and associated indexes. If there is a difference between the tables, an error is returned and the statement fails. Because these checks take place when the tables are opened, any changes to the definition of a single table, including column changes, column ordering, and engine alterations will cause the statement to fail.

• The order of indexes in the MERGE table and its underlying tables should be the same. If you use ALTER TABLE to add a UNIQUE index to a table used in a MERGE table, and then use ALTER TABLE to add a nonunique index on the MERGE table, the index ordering is different for the tables if there was already a nonunique index in the underlying table. (This happens because ALTER TABLE puts UNIQUE indexes before nonunique indexes to facilitate rapid detection of duplicate keys.) Consequently, queries on tables with such indexes may return unexpected results.

• If you encounter an error message similar to ERROR 1017 (HY000): Can't find file: 'tbl_name.MRG' (errno: 2), it generally indicates that some of the underlying tables do not use the MyISAM storage engine. Confirm that all of these tables are MyISAM.

• The maximum number of rows in a MERGE table is 2⁶⁴ (~1.844E+19; the same as for a MyISAM table). It is not possible to merge multiple MyISAM tables into a single MERGE table that would have more than this number of rows.

• Use of underlying MyISAM tables of differing row formats with a parent MERGE table is currently known to fail. See Bug #32364.

• You cannot change the union list of a nontemporary MERGE table when LOCK TABLES is in effect. The following does not work:

  CREATE TABLE m1 ... ENGINE=MRG_MYISAM ...;
  LOCK TABLES t1 WRITE, t2 WRITE, m1 WRITE;
  ALTER TABLE m1 ... UNION=(t1,t2) ...;

  However, you can do this with a temporary MERGE table.

• You cannot create a MERGE table with CREATE ... SELECT, neither as a temporary MERGE table, nor as a nontemporary MERGE table. For example:

  CREATE TABLE m1 ... ENGINE=MRG_MYISAM ... SELECT ...;

  Attempts to do this result in an error: tbl_name is not BASE TABLE.

• In some cases, differing PACK_KEYS table option values among the MERGE and underlying tables cause unexpected results if the underlying tables contain CHAR or BINARY columns. As a workaround, use ALTER TABLE to ensure that all involved tables have the same PACK_KEYS value. (Bug #50646)