Generally, you should find that removing and re-adding the indexes will
speed up your operation.
I do not believe that ALTER TABLE with just index additions will require
a table rebuild, but even if it does, doing a table copy will be a
fairly fast operation (much faster than loading from other sources).
Don't forget to set the MyISAM sort buffer size high while you create
the indexes.
/ Carsten
mos skrev:
> I am loading 35 million rows of data into an empty MyISAM table. This
> table has 1 primary key (AutoInc) and 1 unique index and 2 non-unique
> indexes.
>
> Is it going to be any faster if I remove the indexes from the table
> before loading the data, load the data, then do an Alter Table .. add
> index .... for all of the indexes?
> Or is it faster to just leave the indexes in place prior to loading the
> data.
>
> I know if the table is empty and optimized, the non-unique indexes will
> be built AFTER the data is loaded using Load Data Infile, but the unique
> and primary indexes will be built as the data is being loaded and this
> is going to slow down the import.
>
> There is no point doing a Disable Indexes on the table because this only
> affects non-unique indexes and that is already taken care of since the
> table is already empty and optimized.
>
> But if I remove the indexes from the empty table then load the data,
> then execute the Alter Table Add Index ... for all 4 indexes at one
> time, isn't the Alter Table going to create a copy of the table so it is
> just going to reload the data all over again?
>
> Is there any way to add a primary or unique index without copy the data
> all over again? Create Index ... can't be used to create a primary index.
>
> TIA
> Mike
>
> MySQL 5.1
>
>
