MySQL - InnoDB vs MyISAM

Question

I read the following article yesterday (http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/11/19/mysql-mistakes-php-developers/) and it wrote the following:

MySQL has a num

Answer 1

Sorry for bumping an old question, but this also helped me a lot to choose which engine, especially since MyISAM is faster for reads and my database tables had more read the write:

http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/mysql-engines-myisam-vs-innodb

Answer 2

Yes, you can swap in and out engines like used underwear, if you like, without much trouble. Just change it in phpmyadmin.

But I wouldn't change it for the sake of changing it. Do you need to use foreign keys? Change it. Do you need row-level-locking instead of table-locking? Change it.

It's worth noting that there are good reasons to use MyISAM, too. Take a look at FULLTEXT indexing. You can't do that with InnoDB.

UPDATE

As of MySQL 5.6 FULLTEXT has been implemented for InnoDB tables as well. Here is the manual.