MySQL Upgrade – Do I Need to Convert VARCHAR(32) and VARCHAR(64) from 5.7 to 8.0?

MySQL

I am upgrading a database from 5.7 to 8.0 in MySQL and ran across this:
How to easily convert utf8 tables to utf8mb4 in MySQL 5.5

I understand converting the schema and tables to utf8mb4 and utf8mb4_unicode_ci but regarding the changing of columns to varchar(191) I was lost. I tried to follow their disclaimer and read the notes but I cannot see if this is actually needed to upgrade…or why it is even listed as a step.

Also, are there any issues that could arise from converting the tables to utf8mb4 from utf8 and just skipping converting the columns to a different type?

Best Answer

No you can change the character set, because you don't come to the limit that is explained in the article.

The InnoDB storage engine has a maximum index length of 767 bytes, so for utf8 or utf8mb4 columns, you can index a maximum of 255 or 191 character.

So if your utf8 column varchar has a size of more than 191 characters, you will get an error when converting, because tf8mb4 needs 4 bytes per characters and that will exceed the limit.

But as you only have 32 and 64 characters you are wide blow the limit of 191

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