This section explains transaction-based replication using global transaction identifiers (GTIDs), introduced in MySQL 5.6.5. When using GTIDs, each transaction can be identified and tracked as it is committed on the originating server and applied by any replicas; this means that it is not necessary when using GTIDs to refer to log files or positions within those files when starting a new replica or failing over to a new source, which greatly simplifies these tasks. Because GTID-based replication is completely transaction-based, it is simple to determine whether sources and replicas are consistent; as long as all transactions committed on a source are also committed on a replica, consistency between the two is guaranteed. You can use either statement-based or row-based replication with GTIDs (see Section 17.1.2, “Replication Formats”); however, for best results, we recommend that you use the row-based format.

This section discusses the following topics:

For information about MySQL Server options and variables relating to GTID-based replication, see Section 17.1.4.5, “Global Transaction ID Options and Variables”. See also Section 12.18, “Functions Used with Global Transaction IDs”, which describes SQL functions supported by MySQL 5.6 for use with GTIDs.