Re: Is myisampack a good idea for a read only database to get better performance?

[Harrison Fisk]

Hi,

myisampack can give a performance increase from the reduction in disk i/o. However it will take more CPU for queries, as it will have to uncompress the table info on the fly. Where this is the most use is when data is much larger than available system memory. For small tables, the table will get cached in RAM, so you don't gain much speed and can, in fact, lose some speed.

Setting PACK_KEYS will again do the same thing. Reduce disk i/o at the cost of CPU. Again it would be used when indexes are much larger than main memory.

Combining both will double the effects, which might cause you to lose speed or gain if the indexes are extremely large.

So neither of them is "better" than the other but can be useful in different use cases.

Harrison Fisk, Trainer and Consultant
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com