17.6.2. Partitioning Limitations Relating to Storage Engines

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 13.1.6.1, "ALTER TABLE Partition Operations".

Upgrading partitioned tables. When performing an upgrade, tables which are partitioned by KEY 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: