Tales from the Datacenter

MyISAM vs. InnoDB

So, recently, I’ve switched my blog (and the whole domain, consequently) to IIS.  I used to have my domain hosted over at Host Gator (highly recommended if you don’t have the resources to host your own content), but recently have switched to IIS running 2008 x64 on a virtual guest at work.  So far, I like it.

However, I was disappointed to find that WordPress performed poorly at first.  Then, in my tinkering, I figured out (dumb luck, eh?) that if I switch the tables in the WP database from InnoDB to MyISAM, performance increased noticeably.  I’m not sure if this was the “real” reason WordPress was sucking it up, but it seemed to fix it immediately.

Edit March 10, 2008:

I’m not sure how much of a performance boost this gave me.  I’m noticing a slowdown again, so I’m not sure if this did anything at all.  It looked like it was helping when I first made the change, but now I can’t be so sure.  Anyway…

For Michael’s benefit, this can be accomplished by downloading and installing the MySQL GUI Tools.  Open MySQL Administrator and authenticate as root (or as the database user that has full administrative privileges).

In the lefthand navigation pane, select “Catalogs.”  This will open below it a list of the databases you are currently running.  Select the appropriate database, and the table structure will open up in the right side of the window.

Now, you will notice than my “Engine” column already says “MyISAM.”  This was not always the case.  If you want to change the engine, double click a table.

Once you’ve opened the Table Editor, there are three tabs.  You’re looking for the “Table Options” tab.  Here, you can change the Table Engine to something else.

Now, don’t you feel better?