MySQL Storage Engines

Lets talk about the MySQL storage engines today.

A storage engine is a software module that uses a database management system to create, read, and update data in a database. There are two types of storage engines in MySQL: transactional and non-transactional.

For MySQL 5.5 and later, the default storage engine is InnoDB. The default storage engine for MySQL prior to version 5.5 was MyISAM. Choosing the right storage engine is an important strategic decision that will affect future development. In this tutorial, we will use MyISAM, InnoDB, Memory, and CSV storage engines. If you are new to MySQL and are studying the MySQL database management system, then this is not a big concern. If you are planning a production database, things get more complicated.

MySQL supported storage engines:

• InnoDB
• MyISAM
• Memory
• CSV
• Merge
• Archive
• etc.

Today I will talk about the two main engines of MySQL. InnoDB & MyISAM.

InnoDB

InnoDB tables are fully transaction and ACID compliant. They are also optimal for performance. The InnoDB table supports foreign key, commit, rollback, and forward operations. The size of an InnoDB table can be up to 64TB.

Like MyISAM, InnoDB tables are portable between different platforms and operating systems. MySQL also checks and repairs InnoDB tables, if necessary, at startup.

MyISAM

MyISAM extends the old ISAM storage engine. MyISAM tables are optimized for compression and speed. MyISAM tables are also portable across platforms and operating systems.

The size of the MyISAM table can be up to 256TB, which is huge. Also, MyISAM tables can be compressed into read-only tables to save space. At startup, MySQL checks MyISAM tables for corruption and even repairs them in case of errors. MyISAM tables are not transaction safe.

Before MySQL version 5.5, MyISAM was the default storage engine when you create a table without specifying the storage engine explicitly. Since version 5.5, MySQL uses InnoDB as the default storage engine.

By Yuuma