documentation(help): update MySQLDatabaseSize docs. By Alex

articles/MySQLDatabaseSize.md

@@ -33,3 +33,52 @@ Start a MySQL console and run the following command:
 replacing placeholders in brackets respectively with your `username` and the
 `database name` that should be deleted.  See ["Using MySQL"](/pages/UsingMySQL/#deleting-existing-database) 
 help page or more details.
+
+
+## How to optimise disk space?
+
+We use MySQL innodb tables with the file_per_table setting set to true - this has many advantages, but it does mean that tables that have lots of random row deletions can end up taking way more space on disk than the space than they actually need.
+
+### Step 1 - Discover the tables with the most "free" space
+
+    :::sql
+    SELECT concat(table_schema, ".", table_name) as table_name, 
+       (data_length+index_length)/1024/1024 AS total_mb, 
+       data_length/1024/1024 AS data_mb, 
+       index_length/1024/1024 AS index_mb, 
+       data_free/1024/1024 as free_mb 
+    FROM information_schema.tables 
+    WHERE table_schema LIKE '%$%' 
+    ORDER BY free_mb DESC 
+    LIMIT 10;
+
+This will show the top 10 tables with the amount of space "free" this is the space that is present in the files that comprise the tables. Tables with a high free_mb (> ~ 1G) may be candidates for optimization. Here's example output showing that Big$Table.my_cache_table has ~1.4G free that could be recovered.
+
+    :::bash
+    +-------------------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------+---------------+
+    | table_name                    | total_mb     | data_mb      | index_mb     | tables | free_mb       |
+    +-------------------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------+---------------+
+    | Big$Table.my_cache_table      |  16.09375000 |  16.01562500 |   0.07812500 |      1 | 1480.00000000 |
+    | table1$project.api_wordinbook | 369.71875000 |  77.09375000 | 292.62500000 |      1 |  164.00000000 |
+    | lk$mls.properties             | 473.34375000 | 473.34375000 |   0.00000000 |      1 |  148.00000000 |
+    | lu$site.db_item               |   2.01562500 |   2.01562500 |   0.00000000 |      1 |  137.00000000 |
+    | Smart$panel.Data_twittos      |   0.01562500 |   0.01562500 |   0.00000000 |      1 |  135.00000000 |
+    | So$pr.help                    | 255.81250000 | 255.81250000 |   0.00000000 |      1 |   70.00000000 |
+    | ao$billing.silk_sqlquery      |  55.12500000 |  53.07812500 |   2.04687500 |      1 |   61.00000000 |
+    | i$info.Pe                     |  48.57812500 |  48.57812500 |   0.00000000 |      1 |   52.00000000 |
+    | Smart$panel.Data_activites    |   1.01562500 |   1.01562500 |   0.00000000 |      1 |   48.00000000 |
+    | Smart$panel.Data_activites_2  |   1.01562500 |   1.01562500 |   0.00000000 |      1 |   48.00000000 |
+    +-------------------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------+---------------+
+
+### Step 2 - Optimise Tables
+
+If there are tables in the above query that are candidates for optimization, you can run
+
+    :::sql
+    optimize table <table_name>;
+
+> [!WARNING]: Because this involves copying the table, there needs to be enough space still available on the server for 2 copies of the table
+
+Because we use innodb tables, this is performed by an ALTER TABLE of the table, but it happens in such a way that the exclusive lock is only taken briefly. See The MySQL docs for more details.
+
+Both of these queries can take a really long time to run. The time the second one takes predictably seems to be related to the size of the database (total_mb).