UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Programming MySQL and Server Configuration Memory usage when doing queries

This question relates to this post.

When doing a query, why does MySQL needs to load everything into memory (RAM), instead of scanning the rows one by one? I suppose it's faster (if you have enough RAM), but I would think that input buffering (e.g., read 100 rows, then process them while the next 100 rows are being read concurrently) would be a reasonable compromise. Is this just how MySQL happens to be designed?

Idealy you have enough ram to keep all of the data in memory. You really want this on a busy site for faster access, otherwise you would have lots of delays while reading data from HD, then scaning it, then reading more, etc. I would think this is why it works as it does.

My server has more than enough ram to take care of my board. My board is not huge nor terribly busy, so my 256mb of ram is more than enough for my traffic. I have more delays from lack of bandwidth than server speeds, but since my server is sitting here bored most of the day, it's not worth the additional cost, hehe

I kinda find it hard to believe it loads *everything* into RAM. It just doesn't seem logical as very large databases would not be able to be accessed otherwise. I will look around thier website for more info on this as I'm currious too.