You're wrong. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index-overview.html http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index-o... InnoDB t

You're wrong. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index-overview.html http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index-o... InnoDB tables have online, non-copying (for most operations) DDL in 5.6. Also, TokuDB has had online, non-copying DDL (column add and drop, add index) since TokuDB 5.0.