Description:
Even with NDB not compiled in, you can't change the binlog format. And if you try? No error is returned.
See the behavior as written in the manual:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication-formats-setting.html
How to repeat:
mysql> show engines;
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+-----+------------+
| Engine | Support | Comment | Transactions | XA | Savepoints |
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+-----+------------+
| InnoDB | YES | Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keys | YES | YES | YES |
| MRG_MYISAM | YES | Collection of identical MyISAM tables | NO | NO | NO |
| BLACKHOLE | YES | /dev/null storage engine (anything you write to it disappears) | NO | NO | NO |
| CSV | YES | CSV storage engine | NO | NO | NO |
| MEMORY | YES | Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables | NO | NO | NO |
| FEDERATED | YES | Federated MySQL storage engine | YES | NO | NO |
| ARCHIVE | YES | Archive storage engine | NO | NO | NO |
| MyISAM | DEFAULT | Default engine as of MySQL 3.23 with great performance | NO | NO | NO |
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+-----+------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show variables LIKE "binlog%";
+-------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------+-------+
| binlog_cache_size | 32768 |
| binlog_format | MIXED |
+-------------------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SET GLOBAL binlog_format = 'STATEMENT';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> show variables LIKE "binlog%";
+-------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------+-------+
| binlog_cache_size | 32768 |
| binlog_format | MIXED |
+-------------------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>
