MySQL 8 Administrator???s Guide

Optimizing data size

In order to minimize the space on the disk, we should start designing the database tables. This results in huge performance improvements, as it reduces the amount of data to be written to and read from the disk. Smaller tables usually need less main memory, while the contents are actively processed during query execution. Any reduction in table data space results in a need for smaller indexes that can be processed faster.

As discussed in the chapter on MySQL 8 data types, MySQL supports many different storage engines and row formats. We can decide the storage and indexing method to be used for each table. It is a big performance gain to choose the proper table format.