You have an error in your SQL syntax … USING BTREE

If you see error similar to this one on your MySQL 5.0 while trying to import mysql dump exported on MySQL 5.1 (with mysqldump):
ERROR 1064 (42000) at line 417: 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 'USING BTREE
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8' at line 5
…you should upgrade to latest mysql. Bummer!

This is old and confirmed bug #25162. The problem was in incompatible syntax for key definition in CREATE TABLE. MySQL 5.0 supports only this syntax:
{INDEX|KEY} [index_name] [index_type] (index_col_name,...)
while MySQL 5.1 preferrs this one :
{INDEX|KEY} [index_name] (index_col_name,...) [index_type]
..which lead to incompatible dump.

We have this situation – workstations run MySQL v5.1.33 and our development and production servers are still on 5.0.51a-3ubuntu5.4 (Ubuntu LTS) version. We can’t upgrade MySQL on servers that easily so I first tried updating my workstation to latest windows version 5.1.37. mysqldump which comes with it is v10.13 Distrib 5.1.37, and it produced exactly the same incompatible output. I even tried x86 and x64 versions – with same incompatible results. I submited a bug report to MySQL because it seems that this bug was fixed in Windows installer version but not in without-installer version which I used to upgrade my local installation (bug #46598).

This was going nowhere so I downgraded my workstation to MySQL 5.0.84. I was then able to do proper export from my workstation and import on our development server. I have no idea why mysqldump in 5.1 version didn’t get –compatible=50 switch option. If somebody knows a workaround for this, do share!

If you cant’ upgrade, try exporting from 5.1 with –compatible=mysql40 switch but doing so will heavily downgrade your dump so beware.