Question

My MysQL database contains multiple MyISAM tables, with each table containing millions of rows. There is a heavy insert load on the database, so I cannot issue SELECTs on that live database. Instead, I create a replica of the database for queries and conduct analysis on that.

For the analysis, I need to issue multiple parallel queries. The queries are independent (i.e., the results of the queries are not combined together), but they operate on same tables most of the time. As far as I know, the entire MyISAM table is locked for each query, which means parallel independent queries would be slow. Ideally, I would prefer an engine that supports “NO LOCKING”. I am assuming MySQL doesnt have such an engine, so should I use InnoDB? I might be missing lot of things here. Please suggest what is the right path to take here.

Thanks

Answer 1

MyISAM read locks are compatible, so the SELECT queries won’t lock each other.

If your analysis queries on the replica database don’t write, only read, then it’s OK to use MyISAM.