Types Of Storage Engines

• MySQL storage engines include both those that handle transaction-safe tables and those that handle non-transaction-safe tables.
  • MyISAM manages non-transactional tables.
    • It provides high-speed storage and retrieval, as well as fulltext searching capabilities.
    • MyISAM is supported in all MySQL configurations, and is the default storage engine.
  • The MEMORY storage engine provides in-memory tables.
    • The MEMORY storage engine was formerly known as the HEAP engine.
  • The MERGE storage engine allows a collection of identical MyISAM tables to be handled as a single table.
    • Like MyISAM, the MEMORY and MERGE storage engines handle non-transactional tables, and both are also included in MySQL by default.
  • The InnoDB and BDB storage engines provide transaction-safe tables.
    • InnoDB is included by default.
  • The EXAMPLE storage engine is a "stub" engine that does nothing.
    • No data can be stored in these tables or retrieved from them.
    • The purpose of this engine is to serve as an example in the MySQL source code that illustrates how to begin writing new storage engines.
    • It is primarily of interest to developers.
  • NDB Cluster is the storage engine used by MySQL Cluster to implement tables that are partitioned over many computers.
  • The ARCHIVE storage engine is used for storing large amounts of data without indexes with a very small footprint.
  • The CSV storage engine stores data in text files using comma-separated values format.
  • The BLACKHOLE storage engine accepts, but does not store data; and retrievals always return an empty set.
  • The FEDERATED storage engine stores data in a remote database.

How do I specify a storage engine to use?

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© 2007 John Michael Pierobon

Notes