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13.2.2 Comparing Transaction and Non-Transaction Engines »
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13.2.1. Choosing a Storage Engine

The various storage engines provided with MySQL are designed with different use-cases in mind. To use the pluggable storage architecture effectively, it is good to have an idea of the advantages and disadvantages of the various storage engines. The following table provides an overview of some storage engines provided with MySQL:

Feature MyISAM Memory InnoDB Archive NDB
Storage limits 256TB Yes 64TB No 384EB [a]
Transactions No No Yes No Yes
Locking granularity Table Table Row Row Row
MVCC (snapshot read) No No Yes Yes No
Geospatial datatype support Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Geospatial indexing support Yes No No No No
B-tree indexes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Hash indexes No Yes No No Yes
Full-text search indexes Yes No No No No
Clustered indexes No No Yes No No
Data caches No N/A Yes No Yes
Index caches Yes N/A Yes No Yes
Compressed data Yes [b] No No Yes No
Encrypted data [c] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Cluster database support No No No No Yes
Replication support [d] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Foreign key support No No Yes No No
Backup / point-in-time recovery [e] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Query cache support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Update statistics for data dictionary Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

[a] EB = exabyte (1024 * 1024 terabyte)

[b] Compressed MyISAM tables are only supported when using the compressed row format. Tables using the compressed row format with MyISAM are read only.

[c] Implemented in the server (via encryption functions), rather than in the storage engine.

[d] Implemented in the server, rather than in the storage engine

[e] Implemented in the server, rather than in the storage engine