What are MySQL database engines?

mysql database storage innodb database-engine
pavanred picture pavanred · Nov 20, 2010 · Viewed 63.8k times · Source

I looked around and found some of the MySQL engines are innodb and MyISAM. Perhaps there are few more. My question is what are these database engines?

What are the differences between different MySQL engines? And more importantly, How do I decide which one to use?

Answer

Vincent Savard picture Vincent Savard · Nov 20, 2010 
mysql> SHOW ENGINES;
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| Engine     | Support | Comment                                                        | Transactions | XA   | Savepoints |
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| InnoDB     | YES     | Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keys     | YES          | YES  | YES        |
| MRG_MYISAM | YES     | Collection of identical MyISAM tables                          | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| BLACKHOLE  | YES     | /dev/null storage engine (anything you write to it disappears) | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| CSV        | YES     | CSV storage engine                                             | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MEMORY     | YES     | Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables      | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| FEDERATED  | NO      | Federated MySQL storage engine                                 | NULL         | NULL | NULL       |
| ARCHIVE    | YES     | Archive storage engine                                         | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MyISAM     | DEFAULT | Default engine as of MySQL 3.23 with great performance         | NO           | NO   | NO         |
+------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+

I personally always use InnoDB if I have to use MySQL. It supports transaction and foreign keys while MyISAM doesn't.

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