Optimizing MySQL¶

Query Caching¶

Query caching allows MySQL to store the results of previous queries so that they can be returned quickly the next time the query is performed. This can be very beneficial on many pages, paricularly review requests and the dashboard.

The amount of memory available for query caching can be configured. It’s good to give a minimum of 20MB, but larger query caches will allow more data to be stored.

To enable query caching, first open the MySQL config file. On Linux, this is located at /etc/my.cnf. On Windows, this may be named my.ini.

All cache settings are in the [mysqld] section of the file.

query_cache_type needs to be set to 1 to enable caching.

query_cache_size is the size of the cache. This can be in bytes, or you can use a M suffix to specify the amount of megabytes.

query_cache_limit is the maximum size of an individually cached query. Queries over this size won’t go into the cache. This is also in bytes, or megabytes with the M suffix. 1MB is a safe bet.

To enable query caching with 64MB, set:

[mysqld]
query_cache_type = 1
query_cache_size = 64M
query_cache_limit = 1M