1. MyISAM, in general, tends to be faster then InnoDB. But specifically in the area of SELECTs, which a WordPress blog can make lots of use of. Some folk here tend to believe faster really is better.
2. There are web hosts, for whatever reason, who do not support InnoDB. So having WordPress by default set the db engine to InnoDB would probably create more traffic in the forums.
3. RE: experts, perhaps your company needs to hire smarter. ;)
I was just wondering why I would need to edit a rather large number of files just for this mattter.
I assume that if no technology is specified, the database will be created using the technology specified creating the database (that’s what I did: just removed the “MyIsam” specification). Best solution for the development team, as I look to it, it to remove it as a fixed specification and make it a configuration item. But I’ll have to put that elsewhere, I guess.
The expert I referred to ported MySQL to a non-Unix platform and has found quite a number of issues with MyIsam – it simply is not stable enough, and we have high standards in that matter. That makes him an expert.
(For what I understood, the OS has built-in facilities in it’s file system that outperform MyIsam – even in a multi-user environment).
The way I read it is that the InnoDB takes more resources and more disk space and there are places where InnoDB is a better solution–but maybe not for WordPress installations as Kaf says.
http://dotnot.org/blog/archives/2005/10/12/mysql-myisam-vs-innodb/
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/storage-engine/part_3.html
http://ptribble.blogspot.com/2006/05/myisam-vs-innodb.html
Thanks for the interesting question.
