Is InnoDB (MySQL 5.5.8) the right choice for multi-billion rows?

Question

So, one of my tables in MySQL which uses the InnoDB storage engine will contain multi-billion rows(with potentially no limit to how many will be inserted).

Can you t

Answer 1

No idea on the MySQL/InnoDB part (I'd assume it'll cope). But if you end up looking at alternatives, PostgreSQL can manage a DB of unlimited size on paper. (At least one 32TB database exists according to the FAQ.)

Can you tell me what sort of optimizations i can do to help speed up things?

Your milage will vary depending on your application. But with billions of rows, you're at least looking into partitioning your data, in order to work on smaller tables.

In the case of PostgreSQL, you'd also look into creating partial indexes where appropriate.