MySQL - how long to create an index?

Question

Can anyone tell me how adding a key scales in MySQL? I have 500,000,000 rows in a database, trans, with columns i (INT UNSIGNED), j (INT UNSIGNED), nu (DOUBLE), A (DOUBLE). I tr

Answer 1

From my experience: if the hardware can cope with it, indexing large tables with MySQL usually scales pretty linearly. I have tried it with tables of about 100,000,000 rows so far, but not on a notebook - mainly on strong servers.

I guess it depends mainly on hardware factors, the kind of table engine you're using (MyIsam, INNO, or whatever) and a bit if the table is otherwise in use in between. When I was doing it, usually disk usage jumped sky high, unlike CPU usage. Not sure about the hard disks of the MacBook, but I guess they aren't the fastest around.

If you're having MyISAM tables, maybe have a closer look at the index files in the table directory and see how it changes over the time.