In my two most recent articles (article I, article II), I discussed the virtues of database normalization and how steps taken towards ensuring that your tables are fully ‘normalized’ would ultimately result in a better organized, more easily maintained database. While database normalization certainly is a major step towards attaining the highest level of database efficiency, you may be interested to know that there is even more that can be done to attain the fastest database server possible.

The process I’m talking about is typically known as database optimization, and involves the analysis of several different facets of both your system hardware and your database system. In this article, I’ll discuss those facets that relate directly to the compilation, configuration and subsequent administration of the database server. More specifically, I’ll discuss optimization as it relates to the MySQL database server (http://www.mysql.com), although many of the concepts discussed herein could be applied to any database server on the market today.