MySQL Table Types that are well known - MyISAM - InnoDB - BSD

When making a choice amongst the different types of tables in MySQL, we need to consider the following points

- Size of database based on the activity - Nature of database access / activity (whether it involves heavy reads / writes) - Database backup (schema, data) - Session handling - If it involves a sync to another database - What needs to be done if the application is to be scaled

MyISAM - Table level locking - Has full text indexing - Comparatively faster than InnoDB

InnoDB - Record level locking - Handles transactions - Reliability in handling the database function comes with a price - performance

BDB - Page level locking

To read about table locking issues, refer MySQL link http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/table-locking.html