MyISAM Tables

In September 2002’s “LAMP Post” column (http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-09/lamp_01.html), we briefly touched on the idea of using multiple storage backends (table types) in MySQL:

Jeremy Zawodny

Sunday, February 15th, 2004

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In September 2002’s “LAMP Post” column (http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-09/lamp_01.html), we briefly touched on the idea of using multiple storage backends (table types) in MySQL:

MySQL, like the Linux kernel, is modular. You can disable and even remove pieces that you have no need for. Modularity affords MySQL a very important advantage over many other database management systems: you can choose the type of each table at the time it is created. If a few of your tables need fine-grained locking or transactions, you can choose the table type that best suits those needs. You don’t need to have the overhead of transactions on all of your tables. Few other relational database systems offer multiple table types.

That column went on to discuss the various features of InnoDB tables — one of the most important additions to MySQL version 4.0. However, we never spent much time really looking at the variations of MyISAM tables that exist in MySQL. So, let’s do that here.

MyISAM

As the default table type in MySQL, MyISAM tables probably persist more than 95% of all MySQL data worldwide. (Version 3.23 of MySQL introduced MyISAM tables as a replacement for the older ISAM table format.) MyISAM is now the default because its combination of speed and simplicity works remarkably well for the vast majority of applications (often web sites) that are built using MySQL.

MyISAM tables have very little storage overhead. If you create a table to store 600 bytes per row,…

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