[NTLUG:Discuss] Capabilities of MySQL
Mike
owensmk at earthlink.net
Mon Apr 24 12:17:58 CDT 2000
Steve Jackson wrote:
>
> I am designing a database driven app (on Linux of course), and I was
> wondering if MySQL is a capable database engine when accessing tables
> with 500,000 records (or 1,000,000)? If no, what is the largest table
> size that MySQL can handle? Thanks.
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
It would seem that you need to consider more than the number of records
alone, specifically the product of the record number and the record
size. Each table's data is stored in its own file. I believe that to
access the millionth record in a table, you are effectively calculating
the offset in the data file by record_size*1E6, which cannot be greater
than 2 billion, 4 billion, or 8E12, depending on your architecture and
OS. The MySQL manual sheds a little light on this for several platforms:
http://www.mysql.com/Manual/manual_toc.html#Table_size
So if you had a stock Linux i386 (2 Gig max file size), and a table
which has say, 10 fields which are each 30 characters wide (10*30=300
bytes), then you can hold
2,147,483,648 (bytes/table) / 300 (bytes/rec) = 7,158,277 records
in this paritcular table.
Now, if Linux Alpha had a true 8T limit, you could get somewhere in the
line of:
8E12 / 300 = 26.6 billion records
in this particular table.
A significant improvement to say the least. However, odds are you are
more likely going to see a 1T limit for Linux alpha, if that much. You
may try the linuxalpa.org, but I couldn't seem to find the max file size
anywhere. I called Red Hat, wondering if they could give me a cheap and
easy answer, but the best a got was "real big, to be sure," which tends
to make calculations a little vague.
I am shooting from the hip, but this should get you in the ballpark
based on the given information. As long as you are dealing with tables
which don't contain wildly variable BLOBS, you should be able to
reasonably determine your limitations.
So far, I have really enjoyed MySQL. I have used it in Apache/mod_perl,
as well as other applications. The Windows ODBC drivers work like a
charm, so people on the LAN who have MS Access can connect to the
central MySQL database and do reports. However, I have not dealt in
great detail with Access 2000. I think that when I did, I had some ODBC
problems, but perhaps I just hadn't upgraded the ODBC drivers. Best of
luck.
--
_ _ _ __ ___
/ \/ \ | |/ / / O \
/_/\/\_\o|_|\_\o\___/o
M I C H A E L O W E N S
More information about the Discuss
mailing list