E.7.4. Table Column-Count and Row-Size Limits
There is a hard limit of 4096 columns per table, but the effective maximum may be less for a given table. The exact limit depends on several interacting factors.
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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 aCHAR(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.BLOB
andTEXT
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. ForMyISAM
tables,NULL
columns require additional space in the row to record whether their values areNULL
. EachNULL
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 aboutMyISAM
table formats, see Section 14.1.3, “MyISAM
Table Storage Formats”.These calculations do not apply for
InnoDB
tables. Storage size is the same forNULL
andNOT 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 areNULL
andMyISAM
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 the used table type, not counting BLOBs, is 65535. You have to change some columns to TEXT or BLOBsThe 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 the used table type, not counting BLOBs, is 65535. You have to change some columns to TEXT or BLOBsReducing the column length to 65,533 or less permits the statement to succeed.
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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 forENUM
andSET
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
orSET
columns, or use of column or table comments. -
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Individual storage engines might impose additional restrictions that limit table column count. Examples:
-
InnoDB
permits up to 1000 columns. -
InnoDB
restricts row size to something less than half a database page (approximately 8000 bytes), not includingVARBINARY
,VARCHAR
,BLOB
, orTEXT
columns. -
Different
InnoDB
storage formats (COMPRESSED
,REDUNDANT
) use different amounts of page header and trailer data, which affects the amount of storage available for rows.
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