How to execute select queries, while not locking update queries

Question

I have a table on which i get heavy select queries every few seconds. Due to this, my update queries get locked for a long time. Is there any way by which I can let my select queries execute, while not locking my update queries without converting my table to innoDB. I am using mysql 5.5

Answer 1

Dupe of many other questions - for example this one - on dirty reads with MyISAM. Short of changing engines, there's not much you can do, short of maybe segmenting your data on some criterion into multiple tables to reduce the number of rows and number of concurrent accesses.

And, really, no one wants to segment their data in an arbitrary and unnecessarily complex way.

You might want to take a look at [Handler] (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/handler.html) if all your queries are by indexed columns, but I've never used it so I couldn't say how well it might work for you.