Mysql caches

General

Query Cache (<8.0)

NOTE:

It is disabled by default starting in MySQL-5.6
https://dev.mysql.com/blog-archive/mysql-8-0-retiring-support-for-the-query-cache/

The query cache is a key-value store of cacheable-queries, and their result.
This interferes with benchmarking, since repeat queries may be much faster to lookup.

To avoid the query cache:

# 1. Add a calculated-function to your selected rows - since they are not cacheable
#    TODO: validate
SELECT ..., NOW() FROM ...

# 2. Use 'SQL_NO_CACHE' in your query
#    (This often has not worked for me)
SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE ... FROM ...

It is implemented as an LRU key-value store for exact (byte-for-byte) query matches.
Each cache entry knows which tables it references for permissions, and cache-invalidation.
Whenever any row is changed in a table, all cache entries using that table are purged.

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'query_cache_type';  # cache is 'ON/OFF/DEMAND'
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'query_cache_size';  # max capacity of cache

The OS Cache

TODO:

research. Apparently most prominent in MyISAM tables?

Table Cache

Used differently by different storage engines.

Engine Specific

InnoDB: Buffer Pool

Stores calculated hashes, row data, write buffers, locks etc.

InnoDB: Data Dictionary

MyISAM: Key Cache

Key Caches/Buffers store index values, and depend on the OS cache for row data.