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Static Table Characteristics

Static format is the defaultfor MylSAMtables. It is used when the table contains no variable-length

columns (VARCHAR, VARBINARY, BLOB, or TEXT). Each row is stored using a fixed number of bytes.

Of the three MylSAMstorage formats, static format is the simplest and most secure (least subject to

corruption). It is also the fastest of the on-disk formats due to the ease with which rows in the data file

can be found on disk: To look up a row based on a row number in the index, multiply the row number

by the row length to calculate the row position. Also, when scanning a table, it is very easy to read a

constant number of rows with each disk read operation.

The security is evidenced if your Computer crashes while the MySQL server is writing to a fixed-format

MylSAMfile. In this case, myisamchkcan easily determine where each rowstarts and ends, so it can

usually reclaim all rows except the partially written one. Notę that MylSAMtable indexes can always be reconstructed based on the data rows.