compact row format
The default InnoDB row format since MariaDB 5.0.3. Available for tables that use the Antelope file format. It has a more compact representation for nulls and variable-length fields than the prior default (redundant row format).
Because of the B-tree indexes that make row lookups so fast in InnoDB, there is little if any performance benefit to keeping all rows the same size.
See also Antelope.
See also file format.
See also redundant row format.
See also row format.