Question

innodb or myisam?

Heres what I have:
1 table,

ID (INT, auto-increment, primary key), name (char(40)), then 20 varchar(255)’s.
7 million rows.

Thats it, just the one table!

Query types: (everything is based on the id, only 1 row is ever returned or updated per query, theres no range searches or random or anything fancy)

SELECT (the 20 varchars) FROM table1 WHERE id=’id’;

UPDATE (the 20 varchars) FROM table1 WHERE id=’id’;

Deletes are done in bulk once a week, insertions maybe 5,000 per day. Theres an equal number of updates and selects (about 1000 per minute)

Unfortunately, I do not have the facility to benchmark at present, hence the question, which table type should I use for what I need? What are the main factors you’d use to choose in my case?

Answer 1

Also note that MyISAM will lock the entire table when doing updates, whereas InnoDB will only lock the affected rows.

My personal philosophy is to use MyISAM only when I need full text search (and I agree with DrColossos that there are better search options).