This blog was originally published in January 2023 and was updated in April 2024. MySQL index is a data structure used to optimize the performance of database queries at the expense of additional writes and storage space to keep the index data structure up to date. It is used to quickly locate data without having […]

MySQL 8.0 has a new feature called “invisible indexes,” which allow you to quickly enable/disable indexes from being used by the MySQL Optimizer.

I wanted to share some of my first experiences and thoughts about this new feature.

Why is it good for us?

There are a couple of use cases. One of them is if you want to drop an index, but want to know the effect beforehand. You can make it invisible to the optimizer. It is a quick metadata change to make an index invisible. Once you are sure there is no performance degradation, you can then drop the index.

The main point is that the invisible index is unavailable for use by the optimizer, but it is still present and kept up-to-date by write operations. The optimizer won’t use it, even if we try to “FORCE INDEX”. I think we should be …