title: MyISAM vs InnoDB in a very large table
body: <p>I have a very simple table</p>
  
  <pre><code>CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `largecache` (
    `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `tooltip` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
    `name` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
    `attributes` text NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
    UNIQUE KEY `tooltip` (`tooltip`)
  ) ENGINE=InnoDB
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>With about 8 million entries that is used almost entirely for reads.  I'm trying to make sure I'm accessing the data as quickly as possible.  I'm currently using InnoDB, is it worth it to switch to MyISAM?  My only concern is performance on reads.  Also any other recommends I could use to speed up since the DB reads are pretty much my only bottleneck in my application.</p>
  
  <p>I'm using MySQL client version: 5.1.47</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>
  
  <p>[edit: More details]
  I'm using php, and I'm querying based on exact matches of the tooltip field.
  It's being hosted on a shared VPS with 1 gig of ram, any tweaks to mysql that I can make I'll try, but I know mysql tweaking is a pretty complex issue.</p>
  
  <p>Example query:</p>
  
  <pre><code>select * from largecache where `tooltip` = "Cm8IuIyq9QMSBwgEFS0iGWAd30SUNR2EHJ0nHYYCY-odxZ6okR0pEnPgHWzQbvIiCwgBFXZCAwAYCCAiMAk4_gNAAEgPUBBg_gNqJQoMCAAQvKHZ5oCAgIA6EhUIrcC1xggSBwgEFUn1i18wCTgAQAEY2ojJgQxQAlgA"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I do have APC installed, but not memcached</p>