Partitioning or Indexing for millions of records in a table?

Question

I have a table containing 20+ millions(will go to 60+ within month) of records. Now I have to fetch records very fast.

I am using MyISAM engine and i don't want to create problem during insertion(heard indexing can hurt insertion) of records. So please tell me which is better indexing or partitioning.

What other factors(cache or buffering) i should use. Please let me know with example if possible.

Thank you

Answer 1

Indexing vs. Partitioning is not a 'What's better' question because they aim to solve different problems. Indexing is primarily a performance feature while partitioning is primarily a management feature (to make it easier to administer big databases).

However, there is an overlap as partitioning can also improve performance in some use cases—but not in general, just in some cases. Badly partitioned table can also hurt performance—just like badly designed indexes can.

If you'd like an answer that helps you further you'd need to explain your use case in detail.