Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I build high-craft software and the teams that build it. I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

count(*) in InnoDB

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 18 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

1 Dec 2006

I’d always read that an advantage of MySQL’s MyISAM tables over InnoDB tables was the performance of counting rows with count(*). Conventional wisdom says if you do count(*) with InnoDB you’ll see much slower results on large tables than if you use MyISAM.

I hadn’t ever noticed that difference. In places in my apps where I do count(*) InnoDB seems to be just as fast as MyISAM—even on tables with millions of rows. MySQL Performance Blog has an explanation.

It only applies to COUNT(*) queries without WHERE clause. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM USER ... will be much faster for MyISAM. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM IMAGE WHERE USER_ID=5 ... will be executed same way both for MyISAM and Innodb.

Since most real-world usage of count(*) is in determining how many rows are returned by a query, not how many rows exist in a table, most people won’t need to concern themselves with this performance "issue."

Recently Written

Think Systems, not Symptoms
Dec 15: Piecemeal process creation frustrates teams and slows work. Stop patching problems and start solving systems. Adopting a systems thinking approach helps you design processes that are efficient, aligned with goals, and truly add value.
Your Policies Aren’t Your Culture
Dec 13: Policies guide behavior, but culture is the lived norms and values of your team. Policies reflect culture -- they don’t define it. Netflix’s parental leave shift didn’t change its culture of freedom and responsibility. It clarified how to live it.
Lighten Your Process Burden
Dec 7: Everyone hates oppressive processes, but somehow we keep managing to create them.
Product Add-Ons Are An Expansion Myth
Dec 1: Add-ons can enhance your product’s appeal but won’t drive significant market growth. To expand your customer base, focus on developing standalone products.
Protecting your Product Soul when the Same Product meets New People.
Nov 23: Expand into new markets while preserving your product’s core value. Discover how to adapt and grow without losing your product’s soul.
Building the Next Big Thing: A Framework for Your Second Product
Nov 19: You need a first product sooner than you think. Here's a framework for helping you identify a winner.
A Framework for Scaling product teams
Oct 9: The people, processes, and systems that make up a product organization change radically as you go through the stages of a company. This framework will guide that scaling.
My Networked Webcam Setup
Sep 25: A writeup of my network-powered conference call camera setup.

Older...

What I'm Reading