14.1.3. MyISAM Table Storage Formats
MyISAM supports three different storage
formats. Two of them, fixed and dynamic format, are chosen
automatically depending on the type of columns you are using.
The third, compressed format, can be created only with the
myisampack utility.
When you use CREATE TABLE or ALTER
TABLE for a table that has no BLOB
or TEXT columns, you can force the table
format to FIXED or DYNAMIC
with the ROW_FORMAT table option.
You can decompress tables by specifying
ROW_FORMAT=DEFAULT with ALTER
TABLE.
See Section 13.1.5, “CREATE TABLE Syntax”, for information about
ROW_FORMAT.
