fenway

Assuming that everything is UTF-8, there shouldn't be an issue...

There's a sticky on this forum that describes how to obtain the EXPLAIN output -- you've provided your table definition (also helpful).

Perhaps because you're declaring your variables after you use them...

Assuming you're using MyISAM, use COUNT() -- unless you want to query the metadata using the I_S tables.

What was the solution?

What was the solution?

MERGE just makes it easier to not have to update code to deal with "moving" records... for example, you can have a MERGE table called "record_archive", which contains all "old" rows from "record" table after a certain date. But, using MERGE, that record_archive table could actually be 10 underlying tables, one for each of the past 10 years. When you add a new year, you don't have to do anything to the codebase -- you just change the MERGE table definition. Make sense?

You have to repair this table before you back it up -- there's no other choice.

FULLTEXT searching may not help you... you may want to look into Lucene/Sphinx.

You mean SHOW CREATE VIEW?

Assuming there isn't a tie.

Please echo $sql and post it here.

What record, what table?

There's a list somewhere on the mysql website...

What error do you get?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

That is, make it a proper DATETIME field.

How can it be selecting the "wrong id"? It's random...

It's all of the NULL indexes... why not you have any?

There are also some excellent stickes.

What version of mysql? What is the full query you are using?

I would run ANALYZE TABLE first to make sure everything's up to date... can we see the table structure?

Plesae echo $sql... and you need to escape your variables BEFORE preparing the statement.

Why use timestamps at all? Insert a proper SQL-99 date YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

Post the EXPLAIN output... I'm sure you'll see the WHERE clause is only being applied to the last table.