Newbie question - MySQL index size
- by Tommy
I've just started to investigating how I should optimize my database. Indexing seems to be a good idea, so I want to index a VARCHAR column, the engine is MyISAM.
From what I've read, I understand that an index is limited to a size of 1000 bytes. A VARCHAR character is 3 bytes in size. Does this mean that if I want to index a VARCHAR column with 50 rows, I need an index prefix of 6 characters?
I came to that number by dividing 1000 with the row number 50, then the bytesize per character that is 3. 1000/50/3=6,66. It seems a little complicated, so I'm just wondering if I'm thinking right? It seems weird to me that you'd only be able to index 333 rows in a VARCHAR column, using a prefix of 1 character.