ScratchYourself.com web development, from scratch

When trying to optimize the performance of your MySQL database, the first thing you try is often the most futile:

Table Optimization.

We put this first because it’s often the first “fix” people arrive at when trying to fix performance problems, but we think it’s almost never the solution, so we want to get that out of the way first. Generally speaking, most Mysql tables are created in a very optimum way. 5-10 years ago that wasn’t necessarily the case, however these days most problems are caused at the application-level or table-desgin-level (aka. Improper use of tables or improper table structure). It might be worthwhile to skip this article, but it’s a good idea to keep Table Optimization in mind, just don’t assume that’s going to be some magical fix. (more…)