Długość indeksu MySQL varchar

Mam taką tabelę:

CREATE TABLE `products` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` varchar(512) NOT NULL,
  `description` text,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=38 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

I taki:

CREATE TABLE `product_variants` (
  `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `product_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `product_code` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `product_code` (`product_code`),
  KEY `product_variant_product_fk` (`product_id`),
  CONSTRAINT `product_variant_product_fk` FOREIGN KEY (`product_id`) REFERENCES `products` (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=1037 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

I takie polecenie SQL

SELECT p.id AS id, p.name AS name, p.description AS description, pv.id AS product_variant_id, pv.product_code AS product_code
FROM products p
INNER JOIN product_variants pv ON pv.product_id = p.id
ORDER BY p.name ASC
LIMIT 300 OFFSET 0;

Co jeśli wyjaśnię daje mi to:

+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+---------+--------+----------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys              | key                        | key_len | ref     | rows   | Extra          |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+---------+--------+----------------+
|  1 | SIMPLE      | p     | ALL  | PRIMARY                    | NULL                       | NULL    | NULL    | 993658 | Using filesort |
|  1 | SIMPLE      | pv    | ref  | product_variant_product_fk | product_variant_product_fk | 4       | db.p.id |      1 |                |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+---------+--------+----------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Jak na milion rzędów, to jest dość powolne. Próbowałem dodać indeks na products.name z:

ALTER TABLE products ADD INDEX `product_name_idx` (name(512));

Co daje:

mysql> show indexes from products;
+----------+------------+------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+---------+---------------+
| Table    | Non_unique | Key_name         | Seq_in_index | Column_name     | Collation | Cardinality | Sub_part | Packed | Null | Index_type | Comment | Index_comment |
+----------+------------+------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+---------+---------------+
| products |          0 | PRIMARY          |            1 | id              | A         |      993658 |     NULL | NULL   |      | BTREE      |         |               |
| products |          1 | product_manf_fk  |            1 | manufacturer_id | A         |          18 |     NULL | NULL   | YES  | BTREE      |         |               |
| products |          1 | product_name_idx |            1 | name            | A         |         201 |      255 | NULL   |      | BTREE      |         |               |
+----------+------------+------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+---------+---------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Myślę, że kolumna Sub_part pokazuje przedrostek, który został w indeksowane (w bajtach), jak opisano na tej stronie .

Kiedy ponownie wyjaśnij zapytanie, otrzymuję:

+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+---------+--------+----------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys              | key                        | key_len | ref     | rows   | Extra          |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+---------+--------+----------------+
|  1 | SIMPLE      | p     | ALL  | PRIMARY                    | NULL                       | NULL    | NULL    | 993658 | Using filesort |
|  1 | SIMPLE      | pv    | ref  | product_variant_product_fk | product_variant_product_fk | 4       | db.p.id |      1 |                |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+---------+--------+----------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Co wygląda na to, że nowy indeks nie jest używany. Zgodnie z opisem na ta strona , indeksy nie będą używane do sortowania, jeśli są indeksy przedrostkowe. W rzeczywistości, jeśli obcinam dane za pomocą:

alter table products modify `name`  varchar(255) not null;

Objaśnienie daje:

+----+-------------+-------+-------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------+------+-------+
| id | select_type | table | type  | possible_keys              | key                        | key_len | ref                                          | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------+------+-------+
|  1 | SIMPLE      | p     | index | PRIMARY                    | product_name_idx           | 767     | NULL                                         |  300 |       |
|  1 | SIMPLE      | pv    | ref   | product_variant_product_fk | product_variant_product_fk | 4       | oh_2c98c233_69fe_4f06_ad0d_fe6f85a5beac.p.id |    1 |       |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------+------+-------+

Co myślę, że to potwierdza. Jednak na tej stronie jest napisane, że Tabele InnoDB mogą mieć do 767 bajtów indeksu. Jeśli długość jest w bajtów, dlaczego nie ma więcej niż 255? Jeśli jest w znaki, jak decyduje długość każdego znaku UTF-8? Na zakładając tylko 3?

Również używam tej wersji MySQL:

mysql> select version();
+------------+
| version()  |
+------------+
| 5.5.27-log |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)