What are the advantages of MyISAM over InnoDB?

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MyISAM follows a conservative approach to disk space management and stores each MyISAM table in a separate file, which can be further compressed if required. On the other hand, InnoDB stores the tables in the tablespace. Its further optimization is difficult.

The advantages of MyISAM over InnoDB include:

  1. Simplicity: MyISAM is simpler to design and create, making it easier to use for beginners or for simpler database applications.
  2. Faster for Read-Heavy Applications: MyISAM performs better in read-heavy scenarios where there are more SELECT queries than INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE queries.
  3. Full-text Search: MyISAM supports full-text search indexes, which can be beneficial for applications requiring complex text searching capabilities.
  4. Table-level Locking: MyISAM uses table-level locking, which can be advantageous for some applications where concurrency is not a critical concern and can reduce overhead.

However, it’s important to note that InnoDB has several advantages over MyISAM, such as support for transactions, foreign key constraints, and crash recovery. In most modern applications, InnoDB is preferred due to its reliability, support for ACID properties, and better concurrency control.