The following limitations apply to the use of storage engines with user-defined partitioning of tables.

MERGE storage engine. User-defined partitioning and the MERGE storage engine are not compatible. Tables using the MERGE storage engine cannot be partitioned. Partitioned tables cannot be merged.

FEDERATED storage engine. Partitioning of FEDERATED tables is not supported; it is not possible to create partitioned FEDERATED tables.

CSV storage engine. Partitioned tables using the CSV storage engine are not supported; it is not possible to create partitioned CSV tables.

InnoDB storage engine. InnoDB foreign keys and MySQL partitioning are not compatible. Partitioned InnoDB tables cannot have foreign key references, nor can they have columns referenced by foreign keys. InnoDB tables which have or which are referenced by foreign keys cannot be partitioned.

In addition, ALTER TABLE ... OPTIMIZE PARTITION does not work correctly with partitioned tables that use the InnoDB storage engine. Use ALTER TABLE ... REBUILD PARTITION and ALTER TABLE ... ANALYZE PARTITION, instead, for such tables. For more information, see Section 13.1.7.1, "ALTER TABLE Partition Operations".

NDB storage engine (MySQL Cluster). Partitioning by KEY (including LINEAR KEY) is the only type of partitioning supported for the NDB storage engine. It is not possible in MySQL Cluster NDB 7.3 to create a MySQL Cluster table using any partitioning type other than [LINEAR] KEY, and attempting to do so fails with an error.

In addition, the maximum number of partitions that can be defined for an NDB table depends on the number of data nodes and node groups in the cluster, the version of the MySQL Cluster software in use, and other factors. See NDB and user-defined partitioning, for more information.

CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE statements that would cause a user-partitioned NDB table not to meet either or both of the following two requirements are not permitted, and fail with an error:

Exception. If a user-partitioned NDB table is created using an empty column-list (that is, using PARTITION BY KEY() or PARTITION BY LINEAR KEY()), then no explicit primary key is required.

Upgrading partitioned tables. When performing an upgrade, tables which are partitioned by KEY and which use any storage engine other than NDB must be dumped and reloaded.

Same storage engine for all partitions. All partitions of a partitioned table must use the same storage engine and it must be the same storage engine used by the table as a whole. In addition, if one does not specify an engine on the table level, then one must do either of the following when creating or altering a partitioned table: