what are the main differences between MyISAM and InnoDB
table storage structures ?
what are the advantages and disadvantages in usage of these ?

Answer Posted / mark

this is pretty straightforward, not too technical though:

http://forums.devarticles.com/general-sql-development-47/difference-between-myisam-and-non-myisam-tables-1745.html

FTA:
"MyISAM is of course the default table type i'm MySQL. It's
an improvement over the now-deprecated ISAM table type. It
provides a simple tree structure for quick indexing on small
tables, typicall fewer than 10,000 rows of data.

There are some other types of tables supported in MySQL,
most of which won't provide any noticable differences.

A MERGE table is a table that only exists in memory, and
will not be saved if MySQL crashes or has to be restarted.
It is, as the name suggests, a merge of two (or more)
tables. If you drop a MERGE table, it only drops the
reference to the merge, not to the tables that are combined
in it. It's not good for much!

Another table, the one which is best for huge tables, is
InnoDB. It's probably the best RDBMS out there; it's
actually a whole set of drivers on it's own, and when you
use it, MySQL is really just a wrapper around the InnoDB
table. Slashdot and other megamammoth sites out there use
it, it's fast and effecient, but the trees are pretty large,
so it's not good for smaller tables.

There are a few others.. like BerkeleyDB, which isn't
anything special and doesn't provide any major performance
increase.

The major difference between the various table types are the
data tree structures and how they're handled within the RDBMS.

In the end, you'll probably find yourself sticking to MyISAM
unless you're on a very large-scale project, in which cas
eyou probably woudln't use MySQL anyway =D"

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