| Data Access Trend | Examples | Table Type | Reason | |
| Very Fast | - Frequently requested data | Heap | - Very fast data access | |
| Read only | - Headlines on webpages | |||
| Retired/not | - Frequently requested data | ISAM | - OS dependent data files | |
| Recommended | - slow | |||
| NTST | MyISAM | |||
| Read only | - Text files f.e. HTML pages | - Frequent access | ||
| Or | - Infrequent Updates, | |||
| Write only | - Fast data access | |||
| - Fulltest search | ||||
| Fast read only | - archiving files f.e. | MERGE | - Data can be split in several files | |
| - regularly table backup | - Faster data access than MyISAM | |||
| With same structure | - Maintenance low | |||
| - Log file tables | ||||
| Critical data | - Inventory list | BDB* | - Freuqent access and updates | |
| - Transactions | ||||
| High Concurrency | -Customer Orders | - Page level locking | ||
| (availability) | ||||
| Heavy Update | - Customer Database | - Critical data, frequent updates, | ||
| - Page level locking | ||||
| - Crash recovery | ||||
| TST | ||||
| Critical data | - Inventory list | InnoDB | - Freuqent access and updates | |
| - Transactions | ||||
| High Concurrency | - Customer Orders | - Row level locking | ||
| (availability) | ||||
| Heavy Update | - Customer Account info | - Critical data, frequent updates, | ||
| - Row level locking | ||||
| - Crash recovery | ||||
| - Foreign key support |