Nate Weiner

This is an old archived post from my former blog The Idea Shower. It's where I cataloged my product explorations and releases, one of which ultimately became Pocket.

This post was published back in 2008. It may not function as originally intended or may be missing images.

Quick Way to Help Optimize Mysql Databases

August 05, 2008

The Analyse procedure built into MySql can give you a wealth of information about your database tables, making it easy to find tables that can be tightened up.

If you query:

SELECT * FROM table_name PROCEDURE ANALYSE()
You'll get a result back with the minimum/maximum value, minimum/maximum length, number of empty or zero strings, number of nulls, the average value/length, the standard deviation, and a suggested optimal fieldtype for every row in the table.

Should be noted this isn't very helpful unless you have active tables with a fair amount of data in them already.