Manual:$wgDBTableOptions

Details
MySQL table options to use during installation or update. $wgDBTableOptions will be set in the LocalSettings.php file generated by the installer. You can choose one of the following options resulting in the according values:


 * MySQL binary: ENGINE=InnoDB, DEFAULT CHARSET=binary
 * MySQL UTF-8: ENGINE=InnoDB, DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
 * MySQL 4.0 backwards-compatible UTF-8: TYPE=InnoDB

Note:

The keyword "TYPE" was deprecated and is no longer supported by current MySQL versions. If you then use the "TYPE" keyword anyway, you will get an error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near "TYPE=InnoDB"". The solution is to use the keyord "ENGINE" instead of "TYPE".

No matter which value is selected here, internally MediaWiki always produces data in UTF-8 encoding to be saved in the database, so that a conversion is never needed. Since binary charsets prevent MySQL from doing charset conversions, which otherwise might take place, but are unnecessary, the advised value is "ENGINE=InnoDB, DEFAULT CHARSET=binary".