Question

How do I store and index a typical TEXT field in MySQL. In my case the text field will have a max length of 500 Characters, I understand that beyond 255 Chars varchar will behave like a TEXT field, but I need the data to be indexed as well. I will be having where clauses to count certain type of string appearances in the field. Do I store it as TEXT and use a FULLTEXT on that or do I store it as a VARCHAR(500) and Index it?

Answer 1

Native Full Text Indexing on MySQL requires the engine to be MyISAM. Beyond that, I’d recommend using VARCHAR(500) rather than TEXT because:

• TEXT would allow more than 500 characters
• searching against VARCHAR is generally faster than TEXT, indexed or otherwise