More on MySQL

In my last job, I witnessed a MySQL database excede the 4GB limit. It was a home-grown lims system keeping track of massive amounts of sequencing data. I don't imagine I'll see that again but if I had to keep an eye on things, it's always handy to remember the sweet little commands. The MySQL forum has a nice summary here. What I like is the use of the double '/ 1024' to get the size display in MB and the reminder that the 'database size' is calculated from multiple values. Here we see that the size is coming from both the table data and the indexes. I've never paid close attention to the size of the indexes, but it's good to remember that.

The actual amount of disk space a db takes up is queried by something like a 'du' in the appropriate directory. This is what threw us for a loop once with a problem in the InnoDB tables. I think it was a bonafide bug in MySQL at the time but the InnoDB tables were taking up a LOT of disk space... I'll have to remember what that was all about. It was a good lesson.