heap or myisam?

[fr600]

What's the actual difference between them? Can you please tell me?

[MarkR]

Heap tables are temporary - they get automatically thrown away once the connection is broken. So you can't use them unless you use CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE.

There also seem to be some other limitations with heap tables; you can't do certain types of multi-table deletes with heap tables which work with myisam.

Mark

[Drakla]

Heap tables are stored in memory - so are fast, but die when your server does, not when the connection goes. You create them by just putting Type=Heap after your create

create table fringe (
length int unsigned
) TYPE=HEAP;

There's loads on table types over at mysql.com