In my previous post I pointed out that the existing ARCHIVE storage engine in MySQL may not be the one that will satisfy your needs when it comes to effectively storing large and/or old data. But are there any good alternatives? As the primary purpose of this engine is to store rarely accessed data in disk space efficient way, I will focus here on data compression abilities rather then on performance.
The InnoDB engine provides compressed row format, but is it’s efficiency even close to the one from that available in archive engine? You can also compress MyISAM tables by using myisampack tool, but that also means a table will be read only after such operation.
Moreover, I don’t trust MyISAM nor Archive when it comes to data durability. Fortunately along came a quite new (open source since April 2013) player into this field – TokuDB! It seems to provide an excellent compression ratios, but also it’s fully ACID compliant, and does not have any of the limitations present in Archive, so it’s functionality is much more like InnoDB! This may allow you also to store production data on SSD drives, which disk space cost is still higher then on traditional disks, where otherwise it could be too expensive.
To better illustrate what choice do we have, I made some very simple disk savings comparison of all the mentioned variants.
I have used an example table with some scientific data fetched from here (no indexes):
CREATE TABLE `table1` ( `snp_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `contig_acc` varchar(32) DEFAULT NULL, `contig_ver` tinyint(4) DEFAULT NULL, `asn_from` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `asn_to` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `locus_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `locus_symbol` varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL, `mrna_acc` varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL, `mrna_ver` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `protein_acc` varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL, `protein_ver` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `fxn_class` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `reading_frame` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `allele` text, `residue` text, `aa_position` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `build_id` varchar(4) NOT NULL, `ctg_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `mrna_start` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `mrna_stop` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `codon` text, `protRes` char(3) DEFAULT NULL, `contig_gi` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `mrna_gi` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `mrna_orien` tinyint(4) DEFAULT NULL, `cp_mrna_ver` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `cp_mrna_gi` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `verComp` varchar(7) NOT NULL )
ARCHIVE storage engine
mysql >show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Name: table1
Engine: ARCHIVE
Version: 10
Row_format: Compressed
Rows: 19829016
Avg_row_length: 11
Data_length: 221158267
Max_data_length: 0
Index_length: 0
Data_free: 0
Auto_increment: NULL
Create_time: NULL
Update_time: 2013-12-22 23:58:51
Check_time: NULL
Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
Checksum: NULL
Create_options:
Comment:
1 row in set (0.28 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 211M Dec 22 23:58 table1.ARZTokuDB engine, default compression
mysql >show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Name: table1
Engine: TokuDB
Version: 10
Row_format: tokudb_zlib
Rows: 19829016
Avg_row_length: 127
Data_length: 2518948412
Max_data_length: 9223372036854775807
Index_length: 0
Data_free: 6615040
Auto_increment: NULL
Create_time: 2013-12-23 00:03:47
Update_time: 2013-12-23 00:12:14
Check_time: NULL
Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
Checksum: NULL
Create_options:
Comment:
1 row in set (0.13 sec)
-rwxrwx--x. 1 przemek przemek 284M Dec 23 00:12 _b_tokudb_table1_main_32_1_18_B_0.tokudbTokuDB engine, highest compression
mysql [localhost] {msandbox} (b_tokudb) > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Name: table1
Engine: TokuDB
Version: 10
Row_format: tokudb_lzma
Rows: 19829016
Avg_row_length: 127
Data_length: 2518948412
Max_data_length: 9223372036854775807
Index_length: 0
Data_free: 6950912
Auto_increment: NULL
Create_time: 2013-12-23 00:43:47
Update_time: 2013-12-23 00:49:14
Check_time: NULL
Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
Checksum: NULL
Create_options: row_format=TOKUDB_LZMA
Comment:
1 row in set (0.01 sec)
-rwxrwx--x. 1 przemek przemek 208M Dec 23 00:49 _b_tokudb_sql_980_2_main_1b92_2_18.tokudb(btw, did you notice how the file name changed after altering with different compression?
It’s no longer reflecting the real table name, so quite confusing 
)
InnoDB engine, uncompressed
mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G *************************** 1. row *************************** Name: table1 Engine: InnoDB Version: 10 Row_format: Compact Rows: 19898159 Avg_row_length: 117 Data_length: 2343567360 Max_data_length: 0 Index_length: 0 Data_free: 4194304 Auto_increment: NULL Create_time: 2014-01-01 16:47:03 Update_time: NULL Check_time: NULL Collation: latin1_swedish_ci Checksum: NULL Create_options: Comment: 1 row in set (0.42 sec) -rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 2.3G Jan 1 16:37 table1.ibd
InnoDB engine, compressed with default page size (8kB)
mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G *************************** 1. row *************************** Name: table1 Engine: InnoDB Version: 10 Row_format: Compressed Rows: 19737546 Avg_row_length: 59 Data_length: 1171783680 Max_data_length: 0 Index_length: 0 Data_free: 5767168 Auto_increment: NULL Create_time: 2014-01-01 18:51:22 Update_time: NULL Check_time: NULL Collation: latin1_swedish_ci Checksum: NULL Create_options: row_format=COMPRESSED Comment: 1 row in set (0.31 sec) -rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 1.2G Jan 1 18:51 table1.ibd
InnoDB engine, compressed with 4kB page size
mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Name: table1
Engine: InnoDB
Version: 10
Row_format: Compressed
Rows: 19724692
Avg_row_length: 30
Data_length: 592445440
Max_data_length: 0
Index_length: 0
Data_free: 3932160
Auto_increment: NULL
Create_time: 2014-01-01 19:41:12
Update_time: NULL
Check_time: NULL
Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
Checksum: NULL
Create_options: row_format=COMPRESSED KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=4
Comment:
1 row in set (0.03 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 584M Jan 1 19:41 table1.ibdMyISAM engine, uncompressed
mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Name: table1
Engine: MyISAM
Version: 10
Row_format: Dynamic
Rows: 19829016
Avg_row_length: 95
Data_length: 1898246492
Max_data_length: 281474976710655
Index_length: 1024
Data_free: 0
Auto_increment: NULL
Create_time: 2013-12-23 11:02:28
Update_time: 2013-12-23 11:03:45
Check_time: NULL
Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
Checksum: NULL
Create_options:
Comment:
1 row in set (0.01 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 1.8G Dec 23 11:03 table1.MYDMyISAM engine, compressed (myisampack)
mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Name: table1
Engine: MyISAM
Version: 10
Row_format: Compressed
Rows: 19829016
Avg_row_length: 42
Data_length: 848098828
Max_data_length: 281474976710655
Index_length: 1024
Data_free: 0
Auto_increment: NULL
Create_time: 2013-12-23 11:02:28
Update_time: 2013-12-23 11:03:45
Check_time: NULL
Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
Checksum: 853535317
Create_options:
Comment:
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 809M Dec 23 11:03 table1.MYDCompression summary table
| Engine | Compression | Table size [MB] |
|---|---|---|
| InnoDB | none | 2272 |
| InnoDB | KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=8 | 1144 |
| InnoDB | KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=4 | 584 |
| MyISAM | none | 1810 |
| MyISAM | compressed with myisampack | 809 |
| Archive | default | 211 |
| TokuDB | ZLIB | 284 |
| TokuDB | LZMA | 208 |
So the clear winner is TokuDB, leaving InnoDB far behind. But this is just one test – the results may be very different for your specific data.
To get even better idea, let’s compare several crucial features available in mentioned storage engines
| Feature | Archive | MyISAM (compressed) | InnoDB | TokuDB |
| DML | only INSERTs | no | yes | yes |
| Transactions | no | no | yes | yes |
| ACID | no | no | yes | yes |
| Indexes | no | yes | yes | yes |
| Online DDL | no | no | yes * | yes ** |
* – since version 5.6, with some limitations
** – supports add/drop indexes, add/drop/rename columns and expand int, char, varchar and varbinary data types
Summary
TokuDB seems to be an excellent alternative when it comes to disk space usage efficiency, but this is not the only reason why you should try it perhaps.
You may want to check these articles too:
- Percona Server 5.6.14 with TokuDB 7.1 Experimental build
- Benchmarking Percona Server TokuDB vs InnoDB
- Using TokuDB: A Guided Walk Through a TokuDB Implementation
- Archive vs Percona XtraDB vs Tokutek TokuDB LOAD DATA performance
- Adventures in archiving
- Data Analytics: MyISAM vs ARCHIVE vs Infobright ICE vs Infobright IEE
The post The MySQL ARCHIVE storage engine – Alternatives appeared first on MySQL Performance Blog.