The MySQL ARCHIVE storage engine – Alternatives

In my previous post I pointed out that the existing ARCHIVE storage engine in MySQL may not be the one that will satisfy your needs when it comes to effectively storing large and/or old data. But are there any good alternatives? As the primary purpose of this engine is to store rarely accessed data in disk space efficient way, I will focus here on data compression abilities rather then on performance.

The InnoDB engine provides compressed row format, but is it’s efficiency even close to the one from that available in archive engine? You can also compress MyISAM tables by using myisampack tool, but that also means a table will be read only after such operation.

Moreover, I don’t trust MyISAM nor Archive when it comes to data durability. Fortunately along came a quite new (open source since April 2013) player into this field – TokuDB! It seems to provide an excellent compression ratios, but also it’s fully ACID compliant, and does not have any of the limitations present in Archive, so it’s functionality is much more like InnoDB! This may allow you also to store production data on SSD drives, which disk space cost is still higher then on traditional disks, where otherwise it could be too expensive.

To better illustrate what choice do we have, I made some very simple disk savings comparison of all the mentioned variants.
I have used an example table with some scientific data fetched from here (no indexes):

CREATE TABLE `table1` (
  `snp_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `contig_acc` varchar(32) DEFAULT NULL,
  `contig_ver` tinyint(4) DEFAULT NULL,
  `asn_from` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `asn_to` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `locus_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `locus_symbol` varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL,
  `mrna_acc` varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL,
  `mrna_ver` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `protein_acc` varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL,
  `protein_ver` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `fxn_class` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `reading_frame` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `allele` text,
  `residue` text,
  `aa_position` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `build_id` varchar(4) NOT NULL,
  `ctg_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `mrna_start` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `mrna_stop` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `codon` text,
  `protRes` char(3) DEFAULT NULL,
  `contig_gi` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `mrna_gi` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `mrna_orien` tinyint(4) DEFAULT NULL,
  `cp_mrna_ver` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `cp_mrna_gi` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `verComp` varchar(7) NOT NULL
)

ARCHIVE storage engine

mysql >show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: ARCHIVE
        Version: 10
     Row_format: Compressed
           Rows: 19829016
 Avg_row_length: 11
    Data_length: 221158267
Max_data_length: 0
   Index_length: 0
      Data_free: 0
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: NULL
    Update_time: 2013-12-22 23:58:51
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options:
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.28 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 211M Dec 22 23:58 table1.ARZ

TokuDB engine, default compression

mysql >show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: TokuDB
        Version: 10
     Row_format: tokudb_zlib
           Rows: 19829016
 Avg_row_length: 127
    Data_length: 2518948412
Max_data_length: 9223372036854775807
   Index_length: 0
      Data_free: 6615040
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2013-12-23 00:03:47
    Update_time: 2013-12-23 00:12:14
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options:
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.13 sec)
-rwxrwx--x. 1 przemek przemek 284M Dec 23 00:12 _b_tokudb_table1_main_32_1_18_B_0.tokudb

TokuDB engine, highest compression

mysql [localhost] {msandbox} (b_tokudb) > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: TokuDB
        Version: 10
     Row_format: tokudb_lzma
           Rows: 19829016
 Avg_row_length: 127
    Data_length: 2518948412
Max_data_length: 9223372036854775807
   Index_length: 0
      Data_free: 6950912
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2013-12-23 00:43:47
    Update_time: 2013-12-23 00:49:14
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options: row_format=TOKUDB_LZMA
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.01 sec)
-rwxrwx--x. 1 przemek przemek 208M Dec 23 00:49 _b_tokudb_sql_980_2_main_1b92_2_18.tokudb

(btw, did you notice how the file name changed after altering with different compression?
It’s no longer reflecting the real table name, so quite confusing )

InnoDB engine, uncompressed

mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: InnoDB
        Version: 10
     Row_format: Compact
           Rows: 19898159
 Avg_row_length: 117
    Data_length: 2343567360
Max_data_length: 0
   Index_length: 0
      Data_free: 4194304
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2014-01-01 16:47:03
    Update_time: NULL
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options:
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.42 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 2.3G Jan  1 16:37 table1.ibd

InnoDB engine, compressed with default page size (8kB)

mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: InnoDB
        Version: 10
     Row_format: Compressed
           Rows: 19737546
 Avg_row_length: 59
    Data_length: 1171783680
Max_data_length: 0
   Index_length: 0
      Data_free: 5767168
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2014-01-01 18:51:22
    Update_time: NULL
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options: row_format=COMPRESSED
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.31 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 1.2G Jan  1 18:51 table1.ibd

InnoDB engine, compressed with 4kB page size

mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: InnoDB
        Version: 10
     Row_format: Compressed
           Rows: 19724692
 Avg_row_length: 30
    Data_length: 592445440
Max_data_length: 0
   Index_length: 0
      Data_free: 3932160
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2014-01-01 19:41:12
    Update_time: NULL
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options: row_format=COMPRESSED KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=4
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.03 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 584M Jan  1 19:41 table1.ibd

MyISAM engine, uncompressed

mysql > show table status like 'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: MyISAM
        Version: 10
     Row_format: Dynamic
           Rows: 19829016
 Avg_row_length: 95
    Data_length: 1898246492
Max_data_length: 281474976710655
   Index_length: 1024
      Data_free: 0
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2013-12-23 11:02:28
    Update_time: 2013-12-23 11:03:45
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: NULL
 Create_options:
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.01 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 1.8G Dec 23 11:03 table1.MYD

MyISAM engine, compressed (myisampack)

mysql > show table status like  'table1'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           Name: table1
         Engine: MyISAM
        Version: 10
     Row_format: Compressed
           Rows: 19829016
 Avg_row_length: 42
    Data_length: 848098828
Max_data_length: 281474976710655
   Index_length: 1024
      Data_free: 0
 Auto_increment: NULL
    Create_time: 2013-12-23 11:02:28
    Update_time: 2013-12-23 11:03:45
     Check_time: NULL
      Collation: latin1_swedish_ci
       Checksum: 853535317
 Create_options:
        Comment:
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
-rw-rw----. 1 przemek przemek 809M Dec 23 11:03 table1.MYD

Compression summary table

So the clear winner is TokuDB, leaving InnoDB far behind. But this is just one test – the results may be very different for your specific data.

To get even better idea, let’s compare several crucial features available in mentioned storage engines

* – since version 5.6, with some limitations
** – supports add/drop indexes, add/drop/rename columns and expand int, char, varchar and varbinary data types

Summary

TokuDB seems to be an excellent alternative when it comes to disk space usage efficiency, but this is not the only reason why you should try it perhaps.
You may want to check these articles too:

• Percona Server 5.6.14 with TokuDB 7.1 Experimental build
• Benchmarking Percona Server TokuDB vs InnoDB
• Using TokuDB: A Guided Walk Through a TokuDB Implementation
• Archive vs Percona XtraDB vs Tokutek TokuDB LOAD DATA performance
• Adventures in archiving
• Data Analytics: MyISAM vs ARCHIVE vs Infobright ICE vs Infobright IEE

The post The MySQL ARCHIVE storage engine – Alternatives appeared first on MySQL Performance Blog.