MySQL FEDERATED storage engine support


The FEDERATED storage engine lets you access data from a remote MySQL database without using replication or cluster technology. Querying a local FEDERATED table automatically pulls the data from the remote Manticore index. No data is stored on the local tables.

With FEDERATED engine a MySQL server can connect to a local or remote Manticore daemon and perform search queries. Performing queries via FEDERATED is similar to SphinxSE plugin. Unlike SphinxSE, the FEDERATED engine is bundled in all MySQL installs and can be used with Manticore out of the box, without any additional plugin compiling or changes to the MySQL server.


An actual Manticore query cannot be used directly with FEDERATED engine and must be “proxied” (send as a string in a column) due to limitations of FEDERATED engine and the fact that Manticore implements custom syntax like the MATCH clause.

To search via FEDERATED, you would need to create first a FEDERATED engine table. The Manticore query will be included in a query column in the SELECT performed over the FEDERATED table.

Let’s begin with an example create statement and search query:

    channel_id  INTEGER NOT NULL,
    group_id    INTEGER,
    query       VARCHAR(3072) NOT NULL,

SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE query='SELECT * FROM test_index WHERE MATCH (\'pile box\') AND channel_id<1000 GROUP BY group_id';

The only fixed mapping is query column. It is mandatory and must be the only column with an index attached.

The Manticore index that is linked via FEDERATED must be an index with storage (plain or RealTime).

FEDERATED table should have columns with same names as remote Manticore index attributes as will be bound to attributes provided in Manticore result set by name, however might map not all attributes but only some of them. Arbitrary expression from query select list which name “hides” index attribute will be used at result set.

Manticore daemon identifies query from FEDERATED client by user name “FEDERATED”. CONNECTION string parameter should be used to specify searchd host, SphinxQL port and indexes for queries issued using this table. Connection string syntax is as follows:


Since Manticore doesn’t have the concept of database, the DB string can be random as it will be ignored by Manticore, but MySQL requires a value in the CONNECTION string definition. As seen in example, full SELECT SphinxQL query should be put into WHERE clause on search query column SELECT syntax.

Only SELECT statement is supported but not INSERT, REPLACE, UPDATE, DELETE.

One very important note that it is much more efficient to allow Manticore to perform sorting, filtering and slicing the result set than to raise max matches count and use WHERE, ORDER BY and LIMIT clauses on MySQL side. This is for two reasons. First, Manticore does a number of optimizations and performs better than MySQL on these tasks. Second, less data would need to be packed by searchd, transferred and unpacked between Manticore and MySQL.

JOINs can be performed between FEDERATED table and other MySQL tables. This can be used to retrieve information that is not stored in the Manticore index.

mysql> select,mysqltable.longtext from t1 join mysqltable on where query='SELECT * from test_index where match(\'pile box\')'