"optimising" tables .. whats that?

[Anon]

now i read it on 'coding help' forum, someone mentioning that we should optimise our tables or the database once in a while..

what exactly is it? and what does it do? and 'how' you do it?

🙂

Daarius...

[Anon]

In MySQL the OPTIMIZE TABLE instruction allows the re-use of old values from the AUTO_INCREMENTED fields.

e.g.

---

| ID | datablob |

| 1 | etc etc |
| 2 | etc etc |
| 3 | etc etc |
| 4 | etc etc |

| 5 | etc etc |

If I delete records 1 - 3 and then insert a new record, it's still inserted as record 6.

---

| ID | datablob |

| 4 | etc etc |
| 5 | etc etc |

| 6 | etc etc |

OPTIMIZE the table and insert a new record and it'll insert in position 1

---

| ID | datablob |

| 1 | etc etc |
| 4 | etc etc |
| 5 | etc etc |

| 6 | etc etc |

This is something to do with deleted records still existing in linked lists or somesuch.

/Mike