500,000 rows - Slow when maintaining

[Erik Nord]

Hi,

I have a MyISAM table in my database with about 500,000 rows. It has about 16 columns. Two varchar(95), one text and one varchar(295). The rest are int's.
When I maintains my table my PHP website goes down. After about 15 minutes, I can't reach my server until the mysql question is finished.

I know innodb does not locks the table. I am using MATCH(), which is only supported in MyISAM. It is the only thing that keeps me continuing with MyISAM.
I have (what I know about) two options:

* Put the MATCH()-columns (one of the varchar(95) and the text column) in another table using MyISAM. In my PHP script I join this table. Is this slow or "bad" in some way?
* Switch to innodb and don't use MATCH() at all. Are there any other functions I can use with innodb?

Best regards, and sorry for my bad english,
Erik



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2011 01:00AM by Erik Nord.