UTF8mb4 MariaDB 10.4 - Max key length is 767 bytes error

Question

I am running MariaDB 10.4. I am trying to setup symmetricDS for database syncing. Some of the tables it creates have fields that are are VARCHAR(255). I know UTF8mb4 can only support up to VARCHAR(191)

I know I can setup my database to be UTF8 and this problem goes away. But it is my understanding that is not ideal solution. I can't change the tables/fields that symmetricDS is creating.

I have read some other posts about this, since there are many. But haven't seen anything above MariaDB 10.2 which I believe I read that things have changed with the engines past 10.2. So I just want to see if it is all still relevant.

Is there any way this can be resolved, while staying with UTF8mb4? Or does it even matter and just go to UTF8?

Answer 1

I'd keep the utf8mb4 as the default.

You can use innodb_large_prefix=1 to get past the index length limitation.

Its also quite possible that symmetricDS doesn't actually need 255 length character field and its just a length for arbitrary default reasons.