Re: We're a Big MyISAM Shop, But...

[Eric Robinson]

I didn't really come here to debate MyISAM versus InnoDB, which is why I posted in the MyISAM forum. What I really want to know is how to tell which tables need to be converted from looking at the queries.

What sort of troubles have you seen with people mixing engine types? Why is that asking for trouble?

Since you asked why I think InnoDB is a bloated pig, here are my reasons:

1. It uses 2-3 times more disk space and 5 times more RAM. We have multi-tenant servers with 50-60 instances of MySQL per server. Switching to InnoDB would cost us 10 times as much hardware. Awesome!

2. We see zero noticeable performance gain in our environment. I say "noticeable" gain because I am well aware of all the benchmark graphs, but in real-world testing, we don't see a difference.

3.Supposedly one of the big benefits of InnoDB is recovery from corruption. However, we have 3000+ run-years on MyISAM, and we have never seen a corrupt database. Not ever. We've seen a handful of corrupt tables over the years, but never anything that wasn't super easy to fix in under three minutes. In contrast, the few databases we have on InnoDB are terrifying because every time InnoDB gets corrupt the whole database dies and sometimes fixing or restoring it takes hours, if it is possible at all.

4. You cannot restore individual InnoDB tables from .idb files even if you have file-per-table turned on, which is majorly stupid.

Basically, I hate InnoDB and I wish I could slap its mother.