Every table (regardless of storage engine) has a maximum row size of 65,535 bytes. Storage engines may place additional constraints on this limit, reducing the effective maximum row size.
The maximum row size constrains the number (and possibly size) of columns because the total length of all columns cannot exceed this size. For example, utf8
characters require up to three bytes per character, so for a CHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8
column, the server must allocate 255 × 3 = 765 bytes per value. Consequently, a table cannot contain more than 65,535 / 765 = 85 such columns.
Storage for variable-length columns includes length bytes, which are assessed against the row size. For example, a VARCHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8
column takes two bytes to store the length of the value, so each value can take up to 767 bytes.
TEXT Types" href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/blob.html">BLOB
and TEXT Types" href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/blob.html">TEXT
columns count from one to four plus eight bytes each toward the row-size limit because their contents are stored separately from the rest of the row.
Declaring columns NULL
can reduce the maximum number of columns permitted. For MyISAM
tables, NULL
columns require additional space in the row to record whether their values are NULL
. Each NULL
column takes one bit extra, rounded up to the nearest byte. The maximum row length in bytes can be calculated as follows:
row length = 1 + (sum of column lengths
) + (number of NULL columns
+ delete_flag
+ 7)/8 + (number of variable-length columns
)
delete_flag
is 1 for tables with static row format. Static tables use a bit in the row record for a flag that indicates whether the row has been deleted. delete_flag
is 0 for dynamic tables because the flag is stored in the dynamic row header. For information about MyISAM
table formats, see Section 14.1.3, “MyISAM
Table Storage Formats”.
These calculations do not apply for InnoDB
tables. Storage size is the same for NULL
and NOT NULL
columns.
The following statement to create table t1
succeeds because the columns require 32,765 + 2 bytes and 32,766 + 2 bytes, which falls within the maximum row size of 65,535 bytes:
mysql> CREATE TABLE t1
-> (c1 VARCHAR(32765) NOT NULL, c2 VARCHAR(32766) NOT NULL)
-> ENGINE = MyISAM CHARACTER SET latin1;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)
The following statement to create table t2
fails because the columns are NULL
and MyISAM
requires additional space that causes the row size to exceed 65,535 bytes:
mysql> CREATE TABLE t2
-> (c1 VARCHAR(32765) NULL, c2 VARCHAR(32766) NULL)
-> ENGINE = MyISAM CHARACTER SET latin1;
ERROR 1118 (42000): Row size too large. The maximum row size for theused table type, not counting BLOBs, is 65535. You have to change somecolumns to TEXT or BLOBs
The following statement to create table t3
fails because although the column length is within the maximum length of 65,535 bytes, two additional bytes are required to record the length, which causes the row size to exceed 65,535 bytes:
mysql> CREATE TABLE t3
-> (c1 VARCHAR(65535) NOT NULL)
-> ENGINE = MyISAM CHARACTER SET latin1;
ERROR 1118 (42000): Row size too large. The maximum row size for theused table type, not counting BLOBs, is 65535. You have to change somecolumns to TEXT or BLOBs
Reducing the column length to 65,533 or less permits the statement to succeed.
Each table has an .frm
file that contains the table definition. The server uses the following expression to check some of the table information stored in the file against an upper limit of 64KB:
if (info_length+(ulong) create_fields.elements*FCOMP+288+ n_length+int_length+com_length > 65535L || int_count > 255)
The portion of the information stored in the .frm
file that is checked against the expression cannot grow beyond the 64KB limit, so if the table definition reaches this size, no more columns can be added.
The relevant factors in the expression are:
info_length
is space needed for “screens.” This is related to MySQL's Unireg heritage.
create_fields.elements
is the number of columns.
FCOMP
is 17.
n_length
is the total length of all column names, including one byte per name as a separator.
int_length
is related to the list of values for ENUM
and SET
columns.
com_length
is the total length of column and table comments.
Thus, using long column names can reduce the maximum number of columns, as can the inclusion of ENUM
or SET
columns, or use of column or table comments.