An interesting question came yesterday at the end of the MySQL workshop in Athens. An user has a server with about 40,000 tables, and the performance is not brilliant (oh really?). The reason is that there is an application that requires one or more new tables for any user, and the tables are of about ten different structures.
The user asked the wrong question: "will the performance improve if I change the storage engine from InnoDB to MyISAM?"

Salle gave the first answer. Converting the tables to MyISAM would only exacerbate the problem. Instead of





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I arrived in Athens shortly before midnight. An unusual sight. Most of the taxi drivers in the queue are female. My driver is a middle aged woman wearing a torn leather jacket and with no understanding of English beyond numbers. She said "yes. Liberian hotel", and she adds the name of a mysterious location that I don't understand. I show her the hotel name and address, written in both Latin and Greek alphabet. "Yes. Iberian hotel. I know where." "Not Iberian - I say patiently, pointing at the hotel name on the paper - Imperial.
She says yes, and off we go.
After a minute she fishes a cell phone from her jacket, and asks something. It's a flurry of incomprehensible Greek, but the hotel name I hear very clearly "yadda yadda yadda Liberia hotel yadda yadda". I lean forward and I repeat "Not Liberia. Imperial". "yes, she says. Iberia".
I tell her to stop the


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