Bug #24006 Documentation inconsistent WRT Spatial index support for InnoDB

• Submitted: 6 Nov 2006 12:32
• Modified: 29 Nov 2006 17:43
• Reporter: Anders Karlsson
• Status: Closed
• Category: MySQL Server: Documentation
• Severity: S3 (Non-critical)
• Version: 5.1.12/5.0
• OS: Windows (Windows/Linux)
• Assigned to: MC Brown
• CPU Architecture: Any

[6 Nov 2006 12:32] Anders Karlsson

Description:
The 5.1 manual implies that creating a SPATIAL INDEX on InnoDB is valid, but will really create a B-TREE Index, although the statement is a fair bit unclear on the matter:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/creating-spatial-indexes.html

Another place in the manual implies that SPATIAL INDEX really can be created using InnoDB, but that this may cause a crash:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/spatial-extensions.html

Fact is, none of this is true. You cannot create a spatial index on an InnoDB table.

These are partly covered by bugs #18929 (which caused the crash warning mentioned above) and #23536

How to repeat:
mysql> create table t2(c1 POINT, SPATIAL INDEX(c1));
ERROR 1464 (HY000): The used table type doesn't support SPATIAL indexes

Suggested fix:
There are three options:
- Let the code stay as it is, and fix the documentation.
- Follow the idea of the first referenced part of the documentation and create a B-TREE index on a SPATIAL column when using InnoDB.
- Implement R-TREE indexes for InnoDB.

[6 Nov 2006 12:50] MySQL Verification Team

Thank you for the bug report.

mysql> create table t2(c1 POINT, SPATIAL INDEX(c1)) engine=innodb;
ERROR 1464 (HY000): The used table type doesn't support SPATIAL indexes
mysql> select version();
+----------------+
| version()      |
+----------------+
| 5.1.13-beta-nt |
+----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

[29 Nov 2006 17:43] MC Brown

The documentation has been updated with a warning that spatial indexes are not supported for the InnoDB, Archive and NDB engines.