7.2.17. Speed of UPDATE Statements
An update statement is optimized like a
SELECT query with the additional overhead of
a write. The speed of the write depends on the amount of data
being updated and the number of indexes that are updated.
Indexes that are not changed do not get updated.
Another way to get fast updates is to delay updates and then do
many updates in a row later. Performing multiple updates
together is much quicker than doing one at a time if you lock
the table.
For a MyISAM table that uses dynamic row
format, updating a row to a longer total length may split the
row. If you do this often, it is very important to use
OPTIMIZE TABLE occasionally. See
Section 13.5.2.5, “OPTIMIZE TABLE Syntax”.
