Bug #57875 Lack of warnings for engine type and functionality support (i.e. foreign keys)

• Submitted: 31 Oct 2010 15:58
• Modified: 29 Nov 2011 5:35
• Reporter: Matthew Marshall
• Status: Closed
• Category: MySQL Workbench
• Severity: S3 (Non-critical)
• Version: 5.2.29
• OS: Windows (Win 7 64bit)
• CPU Architecture: Any
• Tags: foreign keys, INDEX, warnings

[31 Oct 2010 15:58] Matthew Marshall

Description:
Using the Workbench GUI it is possible to use a number of different features which may not actually be implementable through the generated SQL based on the actual engine type of a table. I have found that this is most notable with foreign keys, a relatively new addition to MySQL and only suppported relatively properly through the InnoDB engine.

Whilst I would personally advise that InnoDB would be used for many different database types, there are a lot of databases still using a variety of other engines supported by MySQL and any intermediate user, such as myself, may be easily caught out as to the support of foreign keys across database engines without consulting the correct documentation online.

The suggested feature request here is thus that of a usability issue.

How to repeat:
Repeated by creating a table and attempting to create foreign keys on an unsupported engine type.

Suggested fix:
Include additional warnings in the GUI representing the lack of certain functionality based on engine types, prompted when certain actions are taken.

[29 Nov 2011 5:35] Philip Olson

Fixed as of 5.2.36:
+        &workbench; would allow the creation of foreign keys on tables
+        using engines that do not support them. A warning is now emitted
+        if this is attempted.