What is the default storage engine used in phpmyadmin and is my DB or tables affected if I change the default storage engine?

Question

I am using phpmyadmin for managing the database. I want to know what is the default storage engine used. If I change the default storage engine, does it affect my tables, and what things I need to take care of if I want to change the DB storage engine?

Answer 1

Phpmyadmin is only a web interface to MySQL. Phpmyadmin does not have any default storage engine.

MySQL Server has a default storage engine. The out-of-the-box default depends on the version you are using, but let's assume you are relatively recent.

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_default_storage_engine is the variable.

The default value on new installations is innodb since MySQL 5.5 circa 2010. I really hope you are not using a version of MySQL older than that! :-) You can check what the configuration is currently set to:

SELECT @@default_storage_engine;

If you change the default storage engine, that has no effect on existing tables.

The default storage engine is only used if you create a new table without specifying the engine in the CREATE TABLE statement.

Even if you ALTER TABLE, the storage engine for the given table remains what it was, regardless of what the default storage engine is configured as.