17.5.1.27 Replication and Row Searches

When a replica using row-based replication format applies an UPDATE or DELETE operation, it must search the relevant table for the matching rows. The algorithm used to carry out this process uses one of the table's indexes to carry out the search as the first choice, and a hash table if there are no suitable indexes.

The algorithm first assesses the available indexes in the table definition to see if there is any suitable index to use, and if there are multiple possibilities, which index is the best fit for the operation. The algorithm ignores the following types of index:

If there are no suitable indexes after ruling out these index types, the algorithm does not use an index for the search. If there are suitable indexes, one index is selected from the candidates, in the following priority order:

If the algorithm is able to select a primary key or a unique index where every column in the index has a NOT NULL attribute, it uses this index to iterate over the rows in the UPDATE or DELETE operation. For each row in the row event, the algorithm looks up the row in the index to locate the table record to update. If no matching record is found, it returns the error ER_KEY_NOT_FOUND and stops the replication applier thread.

If the algorithm was not able to find a suitable index, or was only able to find an index that was non-unique or contained nulls, a hash table is used to assist in identifying the table records. The algorithm creates a hash table containing the rows in the UPDATE or DELETE operation, with the key as the full before-image of the row. The algorithm then iterates over all the records in the target table, using the selected index if it found one, or else performing a full table scan. For each record in the target table, it determines whether that row exists in the hash table. If the row is found in the hash table, the record in the target table is updated, and the row is deleted from the hash table. When all the records in the target table have been checked, the algorithm verifies whether the hash table is now empty. If there are any unmatched rows remaining in the hash table, the algorithm returns the error ER_KEY_NOT_FOUND and stops the replication applier thread.

The slave_rows_search_algorithms system variable was previously used to control how rows are searched for matches. The use of this system variable is now deprecated, because the default setting, which uses an index scan followed by a hash scan as described above, is optimal for performance and works correctly in all scenarios.