MySQL™: The World’s Most Popular Open Source Database 175 Storage Engines • A storage engine is a low level data storage / retrieval module (disk or memory) • This allows you to choose locking and speed trade offs per table (instead of when choosing db!) • MySQL supported multiple storage engines from the very beginning • CREATE TABLE (key int, value char(10), PRIMARY INDEX key) TYPE=HEAP; • ALTER TABLE table_name TYPE=InnoDB; Copyright 2003 MySQL AB