1.8 Table Types

Table 1-5 lists some of the table types supported in most MySQL installations. For truly atomic database transactions, you should use InnoDB tables.

Table 1-5. MySQL table types

Type	Transactional	Description
BDB	Yes	Transaction-safe tables with page locking
Berkeley_db	Yes	Alias for BDB
HEAP	No	Memory-based table; not persistent
ISAM	No	Obsolete format; replaced by MyISAM
InnoDB	Yes	Transaction-safe tables with row locking
MERGE	No	A collection of MyISAM tables merged as a single table
MyISAM	No	A newer, portable table type to replace ISAM