The Ultimate Guide to High Availability with MariaDB

Charset Narrowing optimization

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Charset Narrowing is an optimization that makes comparisons like utf8mb3_key_column=utf8mb4_expression sargable. It is supported for utf8mb{3,4}_general_ci character sets.

The optimization was introduced in MariaDB 10.6.16, MariaDB 10.10.7, MariaDB 10.11.6, MariaDB 11.0.4, MariaDB 11.1.3, MariaDB 11.2.2 where it is OFF by default, and in MariaDB 11.3.1, where it is ON by default.

Details

MariaDB supports both utf8mb3 and utf8mb4 character sets. It is possible to construct join queries that compare columns that use different collations.

Suppose, we have table users that uses utf8mb4:

create table users (
  user_name_mb4 varchar(100) collate utf8mb4_general_ci,
  ...
);

and table orders that uses utf8mb3:

create table orders (
  user_name_mb3 varchar(100) collate utf8mb3_general_ci,
  ...,
  INDEX idx(user_name_mb3)
);

One can join users to orders on user_name:

select * from orders, users where orders.user_name_mb3=users.user_name_mb4;

but without Charset Narrowing the optimizer won't be able to use the INDEX idx(user_name_mb3).

Controlling the optimization

The optimization is controlled by an optimizer_switch flag. Specify

set optimizer_switch='cset_narrowing=on';

to enable the optimization.

References

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