AUTO_INCREMENT Handling in InnoDB

This page explains how InnoDB manages AUTO_INCREMENT columns, including initialization behavior, gap handling, and potential restart effects.

AUTO_INCREMENT Lock Modes

The innodb_autoinc_lock_mode system variable determines the lock mode when generating AUTO_INCREMENT values for InnoDB tables. These modes allow InnoDB to make significant performance optimizations in certain circumstances.

The innodb_autoinc_lock_mode system variable may be removed in a future release. See MDEV-19577 for more information.

Traditional Lock Mode

When innodb_autoinc_lock_mode is set to 0, InnoDB uses the traditional lock mode.

In this mode, InnoDB holds a table-level lock for all INSERT statements until the statement completes.

Consecutive Lock Mode

When innodb_autoinc_lock_mode is set to 1, InnoDB uses the consecutive lock mode.

In this mode, InnoDB holds a table-level lock for all bulk INSERT statements (such as LOAD DATA or INSERT ... SELECT) until the end of the statement. For simple INSERT statements, no table-level lock is held. Instead, a lightweight mutex is used which scales significantly better. This is the default setting.

Interleaved Lock Mode

When innodb_autoinc_lock_mode is set to 2, InnoDB uses the interleaved lock mode.

In this mode, InnoDB does not hold any table-level locks at all. This is the fastest and most scalable mode, but is not safe for statement-based replication.

Setting AUTO_INCREMENT Values

The AUTO_INCREMENT value for an InnoDB table can be set for a table by executing the ALTER TABLE statement and specifying the AUTO_INCREMENT table option:

ALTER TABLE tab AUTO_INCREMENT=100;

However, in MariaDB 10.2.3 and before, InnoDB stores the table's AUTO_INCREMENT counter in memory. In these versions, when the server restarts, the counter is re-initialized to the highest value found in the table. This means that the above operation can be undone if the server is restarted before any rows are written to the table.

In MariaDB 10.2.4 and later, the AUTO_INCREMENT counter is persistent, so this restriction is no longer present. Persistent, however, does not mean transactional. Gaps may still occur in some cases, such as if a INSERT IGNORE statement fails, or if a user executes ROLLBACK or ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT.

For example:

CREATE TABLE t1 (pk INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, i INT, UNIQUE (i)) ENGINE=InnoDB;

INSERT INTO t1 (i) VALUES (1),(2),(3);
INSERT IGNORE INTO t1 (pk, i) VALUES (100,1);
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.099 sec)

SELECT * FROM t1;
+----+------+
| pk | i    |
+----+------+
|  1 |    1 |
|  2 |    2 |
|  3 |    3 |
+----+------+

SHOW CREATE TABLE t1\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: t1
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `t1` (
  `pk` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `i` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`pk`),
  UNIQUE KEY `i` (`i`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=4 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

If the server is restarted at this point, then the AUTO_INCREMENT counter will revert to 101, which is the persistent value set as part of the failed INSERT IGNORE.

# Restart server
SHOW CREATE TABLE t1\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: t1
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `t1` (
  `pk` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `i` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`pk`),
  UNIQUE KEY `i` (`i`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=101 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

See Also

• AUTO_INCREMENT

• AUTO_INCREMENT FAQ

• LAST_INSERT_ID

• Sequences - an alternative to auto_increment available from MariaDB 10.3

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