Thanks to the pluggable storage engine architecture of MySQL, upgrading the InnoDB storage engine is usually a simple matter of shutting down MySQL, replacing a platform-specific executable file, and restarting the server. If you wish to upgrade and use your existing database, it is essential to perform a “slow” shutdown, or the new plugin may fail when merging buffered inserts or purging deleted records. The slow shutdown also allows InnoDB to carry out the changes to the system tablespace needed for multiple rollback segments on the next startup. If your database does not contain any compressed tables, you should be able to use your database with the newest InnoDB storage engine without problems after a slow shutdown.

However, if your database contains compressed tables, it may not be compatible with InnoDB storage engine 1.1. Because of an incompatible change introduced in InnoDB storage engine version 1.0.2, some compressed tables may need to be rebuilt, as noted in Section 13.7.10.3, “Converting Compressed Tables Created Before Version 1.0.2”. Please follow these steps carefully.

You may, of course, rebuild your database using mysqldump or other methods. This may be a preferable approach if your database is small or there are many referential constrains among tables.

Note that once you have accessed your database with InnoDB storage engine 1.1, you should not try to use it with the Plugin prior to 1.0.2.