for myisam, it depend the filesystem limit on the system

for innodb,can exceed the file size limit to tablespace limit, the maximum is 64TB.


see the following article
http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/204119


mysql> show table status like 't_shop_124%' \G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: t_shop_124
         Engine: InnoDB
        Version: 9
     Row_format: Dynamic
           Rows: 4594
 Avg_row_length: 338
    Data_length: 1556480
Max_data_length: NULL     <--innodb下最大表取决于ts大小
   Index_length: 196608
      Data_free: 0
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2007-02-09 20:55:10   <---实际上是最近更新时间
    Update_time: NULL
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options:
        Comment: InnoDB free: 4096 kB
1 row in set (0.01 sec)


mysql> show table status like 'tmp_t_shop_124%' \G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: tmp_t_shop_124
         Engine: MyISAM
        Version: 9
     Row_format: Dynamic
           Rows: 4531
 Avg_row_length: 116
    Data_length: 529512
Max_data_length: 4294967295   <---myisam下最大表大小为4GB (ext3)
   Index_length: 95232
      Data_free: 0
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2007-02-09 21:02:43   <---myisam引擎时与update_time作了区分
    Update_time: 2007-02-09 21:02:56
     Check_time: 2007-02-09 21:02:56
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options:
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.00 sec)