Explicitly set MySQL table storage engine using South and Django

Question

I'm running into an issue that South creates the DB table for a new model as INNODB when I migrate but creates the table as MYISAM when another developer runs their own migration.

The problem with this is that all my other tables are MYISAM so using the new tables leads to many foreign key constraint errors.

How can I explicitly make sure the table is created using MYISAM?

What could be causing the table to be created using a different storage engine in different environments?

Answer 1

To be sure that all migrations are always done using INNODB, you should set the storage engine as INNODB in the database definition directly, like this :

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        ...
        'OPTIONS'  : { 'init_command' : 'SET storage_engine=INNODB', },
    }

If you are using MySQL 5.7.x and above,

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        ...
        'OPTIONS'  : { 'init_command' : 'SET default_storage_engine=INNODB', },
    }

But you should know that it can have a performance hit. So you may want to set this option only when running migrations.