How To Create a New Table Using MyISAM Storage Engine? - MySQL FAQs - Storage Engines: MyISAM, InnoDB and BDB

MyISAM storage engine is based on the ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) concept, which was first developed at IBM to store and retrieve data on secondary storage systems like tapes. MyISAM storage engine offers fast data storage and retrieval. But it is not transaction safe.

MyISAM is the default storage engine. All new tables will be created with MyISAM storage engine if you do not specify any storage engine name. But if you want to create a new table with MyISAM storage engine explicitly, you can specify "ENGINE = MYISAM" as the end of the "CREATE TABLE" statement. The tutorial exercise below shows you a good example:

>cd \mysql\bin
>mysql -u dev -piyf

mysql> USE fyi; 

mysql> CREATE TABLE fyi_isam (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
  title VARCHAR(80), 
  count INTEGER )
  ENGINE = MYISAM;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)

mysql> SHOW CREATE TABLE fyi_isam;
  CREATE TABLE `fyi_isam` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `title` varchar(80) default NULL,
  `count` int(11) default NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 
1 row in set (0.02 sec)