A binary upgrade or downgrade is one that installs one version of MySQL "in place" over an existing version, without dumping and reloading tables:

In many cases, the tables from the previous version of MySQL can be used without problem by the new version. However, sometimes changes occur that require tables or table indexes to be rebuilt, as described in this section. If you have tables that are affected by any of the issues described here, rebuild the tables or indexes as necessary using the instructions given in Section 2.11.4, "Rebuilding or Repairing Tables or Indexes".

Table Incompatibilities

After a binary upgrade to MySQL 5.1 from a MySQL 5.0 installation that contains ARCHIVE tables, accessing those tables causes the server to crash, even if you have run mysql_upgrade or CHECK TABLE ... FOR UPGRADE. To work around this problem, use mysqldump to dump all ARCHIVE tables before upgrading, and reload them into MySQL 5.1 after upgrading. The same problem occurs for binary downgrades from MySQL 5.1 to 5.0.

The upgrade problem is fixed in MySQL 5.6.4: The server can open ARCHIVE tables created in MySQL 5.0. However, it remains the recommended upgrade procedure to dump 5.0 ARCHIVE tables before upgrading and reload them after upgrading.

Index Incompatibilities

In MySQL 5.6.3, the length limit for index prefix keys is increased from 767 bytes to 3072 bytes, for InnoDB tables using ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC or ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED. See Section 14.2.7, "Limits on InnoDB Tables" for details. This change is also backported to MySQL 5.5.14. If you downgrade from one of these releases or higher, to an earlier release with a lower length limit, the index prefix keys could be truncated at 767 bytes or the downgrade could fail. This issue could only occur if the configuration option innodb_large_prefix was enabled on the server being downgraded.

If you perform a binary upgrade without dumping and reloading tables, you cannot upgrade directly from MySQL 4.1 to 5.1 or higher. This occurs due to an incompatible change in the MyISAM table index format in MySQL 5.0. Upgrade from MySQL 4.1 to 5.0 and repair all MyISAM tables. Then upgrade from MySQL 5.0 to 5.1 and check and repair your tables.

Modifications to the handling of character sets or collations might change the character sort order, which causes the ordering of entries in any index that uses an affected character set or collation to be incorrect. Such changes result in several possible problems:

The solution to these problems is to rebuild any indexes that use an affected character set or collation, either by dropping and re-creating the indexes, or by dumping and reloading the entire table. In some cases, it is possible to alter affected columns to use a different collation. For information about rebuilding indexes, see Section 2.11.4, "Rebuilding or Repairing Tables or Indexes".

To check whether a table has indexes that must be rebuilt, consult the following list. It indicates which versions of MySQL introduced character set or collation changes that require indexes to be rebuilt. Each entry indicates the version in which the change occurred and the character sets or collations that the change affects. If the change is associated with a particular bug report, the bug number is given.

The list applies both for binary upgrades and downgrades. For example, Bug #27877 was fixed in MySQL 5.1.24, so it applies to upgrades from versions older than 5.1.24 to 5.1.24 or newer, and to downgrades from 5.1.24 or newer to versions older than 5.1.24.

In many cases, you can use CHECK TABLE ... FOR UPGRADE to identify tables for which index rebuilding is required. It will report this message:

Table upgrade required.Please do "REPAIR TABLE `tbl_name`" or dump/reload to fix it!

In these cases, you can also use mysqlcheck --check-upgrade or mysql_upgrade, which execute CHECK TABLE. However, the use of CHECK TABLE applies only after upgrades, not downgrades. Also, CHECK TABLE is not applicable to all storage engines. For details about which storage engines CHECK TABLE supports, see Section 13.7.2.2, "CHECK TABLE Syntax".

These changes cause index rebuilding to be necessary: