Would you say it's a good idea to move to InnoDB

Wien

Hi all,
Everything is in the title... I was wondering if InnoDB is likely to become a standard and if it's a good idea to move my mysql database from MyISAM to InnoDB.

I know InnoDB provides a transaction-safe engine and that it supports foreign key. This is good points but is InnoDB safe and reliable, and what about the perf'

Thank you

Sxooter

Everything I've read says it's safe. Speed wise it's not as fast as MyISAM.

But my opinion is that if you want transactions and FK constraints (and lots of other "real" database features), switch to Interbase or Postgresql, where they aren't afterthoughts.

csn

You can always switch back to myisam for whatever reason. The main reason I switched to innodb is that its row-level locking doesn't back up mysql connections like myisam's table-level locking can.

I did recently have a problem with a corrupted innodb table - needed to convert it back to myisam, repair it, then convert back to innodb again. If there's another way (and there should be), I'm not aware of it. Other than that, no problems using innodb tables.

Sxooter

csn, did you check your machine for bad memory or drive blocks? Most of the time I see corrupted tables (in postgresql that is) it's bad memory that causes it.

csn

Not yet ;(, That one memory program - icantrememberwhichoneitis - requires a boot disk I think. The other one - idontrememberwhichoneisiteither - looks like it might work for me.

Sxooter

Another good check for bad memory is to compile the linux kernel with a -j n switch where n is large enough to almost force swapping. Just compile it over and over. If you've got bad memory you'll usually get a sig 11 from the compiler.

csn

Been meaning to update my kernel too 😉. Just afraid I might hit a snag causing my server to be down for a long time. What all is involved? D/l the source (from where?), cd kernel-src/, 'make', 'make install'? I'm still running redhat 7.3 - been thinking about upgrading that too...

Sxooter

Yeah, you don't have to actually install the kernel or anything, just build it over and over.

download, untar to /usr/src/linux...
cd /usr/src/linux-x.y.z
make menuconfig (wander about selecting options if you want, the save)
make dep
make -j 10
make -j 10

repeat that make like 10 or 20 times, looking for sig 11s.