title: MySQL Tables : Does storage efficiency affect lookup times?
body: <p>We have some MySQL tables with 100,000 to 10,000,000 records. Some of the fields are VARCHAR(100) when in fact no entry exceeds 11 characters. </p>
  
  <p>Clearly we are using up way more space then we should be... If one VARCHAR(100) field for a million-record table uses 100MB of space, then we might be wasting as much as several GB of space.</p>
  
  <p>If we were to streamline these tables, and reduce the VARCHAR fields to their proper size, would it help us with more than just storage space? Could it possibly improve the lookup times for queries? </p>