Hi Peter, Jan, everyone, > Likewise, why have a different location for the data files? > > (A technical question - are the data files incompatible between > 32 and 64 bit servers?)
All the current major storage engines (with one exception) are architecture neutral, both in endian-ness and bit size. You should be able to copy a 64-bit or 32-bit DB either way, and even between platforms without problems for MyISAM, InnoDB and NDB. For other engines it doesn't matter (CSV, MEMORY, MERGE, BLACKHOLE and FEDERATED) either don't have a disk storage format or the format they use is test based (CSV) or based on MyISAM (and therefore not an issue). The current exception for the current releases is Falcon which is, for the moment, unsupported on non-x86 architectures (although partial support is due for the 6.0.4 release and there re further improvements for the release after that (particularly on SPARC and PowerPC). However, AFAIK there is currently no migration support between platforms - you have to dump and reload a Falcon database. In practice, we generally recommend a dump and reload for absolute compatibility for any engine and major migration such as this... Since we are talking about the 6.x release series, that doesn't affect us now, but I'm merely offering it up for information :) MC (also mc at mysql.com) -- Martin 'MC' Brown, mc at mcslp.com Everything MCslp: http://planet.mcslp.com
