7.3. ISAM Tables

You can also use the deprecated ISAM table type. This will disappear rather soon (probably in MySQL 4.1) because MyISAM is a better implementation of the same thing. ISAM uses a B-tree index. The index is stored in a file with the .ISM extension, and the data is stored in a file with the .ISD extension. You can check/repair ISAM tables with the isamchk utility. See Section 4.4.6.7.

ISAM has the following features/properties: