This isn’t a post to start the flame wars between the MyISAM and InnoDB camps, it’s just a short blurb to list some facts about both and let you hash it out in the comments. For those of you not in the know, two of the widely used MySQL database engines (engines control how the data is stored and accessed) are MyISAM and InnoDB, both which have their niche. If you look this up online, there’s a whole lot of discussion about “which is better”, but there’s not really one overall metric that sums up either engine. 

I was going to write a little guide with a table comparison of different features such as row locking, key constraints, and full text indexing, but I came across this great post over at Tag1 Consulting. Hop on over for a good read about the differences between the two engines and when it is appropriate to choose one over the other.

MyISAM vs. InnoDB @ Tag1 Consulting

Labels: Databases, innodb, myisam, MySQL, relational databases