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13.6.10.3 Insert Buffering »
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13.6.10.2. Physical Structure of an Index

All InnoDB indexes are B-trees where the index records are stored in the leaf pages of the tree. The default size of an index page is 16KB. When new records are inserted, InnoDB tries to leave 1/16 of the page free for future insertions and updates of the index records.

If index records are inserted in a sequential order (ascending or descending), the resulting index pages are about 15/16 full. If records are inserted in a random order, the pages are from 1/2 to 15/16 full. If the fill factor of an index page drops below 1/2, InnoDB tries to contract the index tree to free the page.

Note

Changing the page size is not a supported operation and there is no guarantee that InnoDB will function normally with a page size other than 16KB. Problems compiling or running InnoDB may occur. In particular, ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED in the InnoDB Plugin assumes that the page size is at most 16KB and uses 14-bit pointers.

A version of InnoDB built for one page size cannot use data files or log files from a version built for a different page size.