What happens when I reach the last id with MySQL InnoDB? So perhaps I don't know the technical name of the 'id' column which has autoincrement so if a similar question exists, I cannot find it. I was wondering about the limit of the number of rows in an InnoDB table and the id reference that goes with it, and what happens when the limit is reached (assuming it can be reached).

It's a risk I have to consider. I have a table which contains a series of tens to hundreds of records which can be added/removed regularly. Assuming my product reaches enormous success (?), assuming records are changed regularly, the id field will quickly tick by. Add a year or more, even five years...

I asked a similar question to this on stackoverflow some time ago and from what I recall I was just asked not to worry about it but nobody could direct me to a hard answer.

Anyone care to share?

Thanks...
Do not use GUIDs -- they have a serious performance problem at scale.  (This is because of their randomness.)

Within 5 years (probably within 1 year), you will decide on some significant change and this 'last id' question will be moot.

You are "removing" regularly?  Why?  If you are doing a REPLACE or DELETE, you probably have some other unique key on which you are finding what to remove.  Consider making that the PRIMARY KEY and eliminate the AUTO_INCREMENT.

I have a PRIMARY KEY on virtually every table I make, yet only about 1/3 are AUTO_INCREMENT.

Beware of INSERT IGNORE and REPLACE (and others) -- they pre-allocate AUTO_INCREMENT ids, but may not use them.