| Feature | MyISAM | InnoDB | Memory |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACID Transaction ACID - Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (read more on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID) |
No | Yes | No |
| Configurable ACID Properties | No | Yes | No |
| Crash Safe | No | Yes | No (RAM) |
| Foreign Key Support | No | Yes | No |
| Multi Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) | No | Yes | No |
| Geospatial datatype | Yes | Yes | No |
| Geospatial indexing | Yes | No | No |
| Full-text Search Index | Yes | No | No |
| Data Cache | No | Yes | N/A |
| Compressed Data | Yes | Yes | No |
| Storage Limits | 256TB | 64TB | RAM |
| Storage Cost | Low | High | N/A |
| Memory Cost | Low | High | Medium |
| Locking Granularity | Table | Row | Table |
MyISAM:
The MyISAM storage engine in MySQL.
- Simpler to design and create, thus better for beginners. No worries about the foreign relationships between tables.