MyIsam vs Innodb Query Performance

[conor meegan]

I originally tried posting this thread in newbie but got no response. I would appreciate any observations. I am relatively new to MySQL, hence the posting in newbie.

I am working with a test database. Originally the tables were all innodb. I have a number of queries involving and I had performed a certain amount of optimisation to ensure that the queries were using the correct indexes and were not performing a table scan.

I then changed the table type to MyIsam because I wanted to speed up the application as I do not require that the database be transaction-safe. However when I ran the same EXPLAIN on the exact same queries as before, I noticed that the performance statistics had changed from those when I was using Innodb tables indicating that the queries would take longer.

I have reviewed the documentation and cannot find anything of this nature. I was totally surprised because I expected MYISAM to speed up the queries. I am obviously missing something here. Can anybody please help.