Best MySql data types to store variable length strings and binary data

Question

I have a data table which has to be read often. I need to store in it strings and binary data of variable length. I could store data as BLOB or TEXT , but the way I understand MySql, those types are stored on the hard drive instead of memory, and if I use them, the speed of reading the table is going to be low.

Are there any alternative variable length types which I could use? Or, maybe, is there a way to tell MySql to hold the data in columns of those types in memory?

Answer 1

Is this 'data table' the only place that the strings are stored? If so, you need the 'persistence' of storing it on disk. However, MySQL will "cache" the data, so reads will almost always be from RAM.

If each element of data is not 'too' big, you could use ENGINE=MEMORY for the table; that would leave the data only in RAM. A system crash would lose the data.

But if you don't need persistence, there are many flavors of caching outside MySQL. Please describe where the data comes from, what language is using the data, how big the data is, etc.