Optimization is a complex task because ultimately it requires understanding of the entire system to be optimized. Although it may be possible to perform some local optimizations with little knowledge of your system or application, the more optimal you want your system to become, the more you will have to know about it.
This chapter tries to explain and give some examples of different ways to optimize MySQL. Remember, however, that there are always additional ways to make the system even faster, although they may require increasing effort to achieve.
The most important factor in making a system fast is its basic design. You also need to know what kinds of things your system will be doing, and what your bottlenecks are.
The most common system bottlenecks are:
When using the MyISAM storage engine, MySQL uses extremely fast table
locking that allows multiple readers or a single writer. The biggest problem
with this storage engine occurs when you have a steady stream of mixed
updates and slow selects on a single table. If this is a problem for
certain tables, you can use another storage engine for them. See section 15 MySQL Storage Engines and Table Types.
MySQL can work with both transactional and non-transactional tables.
To be able to work smoothly with non-transactional tables (which can't
roll back if something goes wrong), MySQL has the following rules
(when not running in strict mode or if you use the IGNORE
specifier to INSERT or UPDATE).
NULL.
(This behavior can be changed by using the
ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO SQL mode).
If you are using non-transactional tables, you should not use MySQL to check column content. In general, the safest (and often fastest) way is to let the application ensure that it passes only legal values to the database.
For more information about this, see section 1.8.6 How MySQL Deals with Constraints and section 14.1.4 INSERT Syntax or
section 5.2.2 The Server SQL Mode.
Because all SQL servers implement different parts of standard SQL, it takes work to write portable SQL applications. It is very easy to achieve portability for very simple selects and inserts, but becomes more difficult the more capabilities you require. If you want an application that is fast with many database systems, it becomes even harder!
To make a complex application portable, you need to determine which SQL servers it must work with, then determine what features those servers support.
All database systems have some weak points. That is, they have different design compromises that lead to different behavior.
You can use the MySQL crash-me program to find functions, types, and
limits that you can use with a selection of database servers.
crash-me does not check for every possible feature, but it is still
reasonably comprehensive, performing about 450 tests.
An example of the type of information crash-me can provide is that
you shouldn't have column names longer than 18 characters
if you want to be able to use Informix or DB2.
The crash-me program and the MySQL benchmarks are all very database
independent. By taking a look at how they are written, you can get
a feeling for what you have to do to make your own applications database
independent. The programs can be found in the `sql-bench' directory
of MySQL source distributions. They are written in Perl and use the DBI
database interface. Use of DBI in itself solves part of the portability
problem because it provides database-independent access methods.
For crash-me results, visit
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/crash-me.php.
See http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/benchmarks/ for the results
from the benchmarks.
If you strive for database independence, you need to get a good feeling
for each SQL server's bottlenecks. For example, MySQL is very fast in
retrieving and updating records for MyISAM tables, but will have
a problem in mixing slow readers and writers on the same table. Oracle,
on the other hand, has a big problem when you try to access rows that
you have recently updated (until they are flushed to disk). Transactional
databases in general are not very good at generating summary tables from
log tables, because in this case row locking is almost useless.
To make your application really database independent, you need to define an easily extendable interface through which you manipulate your data. As C++ is available on most systems, it makes sense to use a C++ class-based interface to the databases.
If you use some feature that is specific to a given database system (such
as the REPLACE statement, which is specific to MySQL), you should
implement the same feature for other SQL servers by coding an alternative
method. Although the alternative may be slower, it will allow the other
servers to perform the same tasks.
With MySQL, you can use the /*! */ syntax to add MySQL-specific
keywords to a query. The code inside /**/ will be treated as a
comment (and ignored) by most other SQL servers.
If high performance is more important than exactness, as in some Web applications, it is possible to create an application layer that caches all results to give you even higher performance. By letting old results ``expire'' after a while, you can keep the cache reasonably fresh. This provides a method to handle high load spikes, in which case you can dynamically increase the cache and set the expiration timeout higher until things get back to normal.
In this case, the table creation information should contain information of the initial size of the cache and how often the table should normally be refreshed.
An alternative to implementing an application cache is to use the MySQL query cache. By enabling the query cache, the server handles the details of determining whether a query result can be reused. This simplifies your application. See section 5.11 The MySQL Query Cache.
This section describes an early application for MySQL.
During MySQL initial development, the features of MySQL were made to fit our largest customer, which handled data warehousing for a couple of the largest retailers in Sweden.
From all stores, we got weekly summaries of all bonus card transactions, and were expected to provide useful information for the store owners to help them find how their advertising campaigns were affecting their own customers.
The volume of data was quite huge (about seven million summary transactions per month), and we had data for 4-10 years that we needed to present to the users. We got weekly requests from our customers, who wanted to get ``instant'' access to new reports from this data.
We solved this problem by storing all information per month in compressed ``transaction'' tables. We had a set of simple macros that generated summary tables grouped by different criteria (product group, customer id, store, and so on) from the tables in which the transactions were stored. The reports were Web pages that were dynamically generated by a small Perl script. This script parsed a Web page, executed the SQL statements in it, and inserted the results. We would have used PHP or mod_perl instead, but they were not available at the time.
For graphical data, we wrote a simple tool in C that could process SQL query results and produce GIF images based on those results. This tool also was dynamically executed from the Perl script that parses the Web pages.
In most cases, a new report could be created simply by copying an existing script and modifying the SQL query in it. In some cases, we needed to add more columns to an existing summary table or generate a new one. This also was quite simple because we kept all transaction-storage tables on disk. (This amounted to about 50GB of transaction tables and 200GB of other customer data.)
We also let our customers access the summary tables directly with ODBC so that the advanced users could experiment with the data themselves.
This system worked well and we had no problems handling the data with quite modest Sun Ultra SPARCstation hardware (2x200MHz). Eventually the system was migrated to Linux.
This section should contain a technical description of the MySQL
benchmark suite (and crash-me), but that description has not yet
been written. Currently, you can get a good idea of the benchmarks by
looking at the code and results in the `sql-bench' directory in any
MySQL source distribution.
This benchmark suite is meant to tell any user what operations a given SQL implementation performs well or poorly.
Note that this benchmark is single-threaded, so it measures the minimum time for the operations performed. We plan to add multi-threaded tests to the benchmark suite in the future.
To use the benchmark suite, the following requirements must be satisfied:
DBD::mysql, DBD::Pg, and DBD::DB2 modules installed.
See section 2.12 Perl Installation Notes.
After you obtain a MySQL source distribution, you will find the benchmark
suite located in its `sql-bench' directory. To run the benchmark tests,
build MySQL, then
change location into the `sql-bench' directory and execute the run-all-tests
script:
shell> cd sql-bench shell> perl run-all-tests --server=server_name
server_name is one of the supported servers. To get a list of all options and supported servers, invoke this command:
shell> perl run-all-tests --help
The crash-me script also is located in the `sql-bench' directory.
crash-me tries to determine what features a database supports and
what its capabilities and limitations are by actually running
queries. For example, it determines:
VARCHAR column can be
You can find the results from crash-me for many different database
servers at http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/crash-me.php.
For more information about benchmark results, visit
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/benchmarks/.
You should definitely benchmark your application and database to find out where the bottlenecks are. By fixing a bottleneck (or by replacing it with a ``dummy module''), you can then easily identify the next bottleneck. Even if the overall performance for your application currently is acceptable, you should at least make a plan for each bottleneck, and decide how to solve it if someday you really need the extra performance.
For an example of portable benchmark programs, look at the MySQL benchmark suite. See section 7.1.4 The MySQL Benchmark Suite. You can take any program from this suite and modify it for your needs. By doing this, you can try different solutions to your problem and test which really is fastest for you.
Another free benchmark suite is the Open Source Database Benchmark, available at http://osdb.sourceforge.net/.
It is very common for a problem to occur only when the system is very heavily loaded. We have had many customers who contact us when they have a (tested) system in production and have encountered load problems. In most cases, performance problems turn out to be due to issues of basic database design (for example, table scans are not good at high load) or problems with the operating system or libraries. Most of the time, these problems would be a lot easier to fix if the systems were not already in production.
To avoid problems like this, you should put some effort into benchmarking your whole application under the worst possible load! You can use Super Smack for this. It is available at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/mysql/super-smack/. As the name suggests, it can bring a system to its knees if you ask it, so make sure to use it only on your development systems.
SELECT Statements and Other QueriesFirst, one factor affects all statements: The more complex your permission setup is, the more overhead you will have.
Using simpler permissions when you issue GRANT statements enables
MySQL to reduce permission-checking overhead when clients execute
statements. For example, if you don't grant any table-level or column-level
privileges, the server need not ever check the contents of the
tables_priv and columns_priv tables. Similarly, if you place
no resource limits on any accounts, the server does not have to perform
resource counting. If you have a very high query volume, it may be worth
the time to use a simplified grant structure to reduce permission-checking
overhead.
If your problem is with some specific MySQL expression or function, you can
use the BENCHMARK() function from the mysql client program
to perform a timing test. Its syntax is
BENCHMARK(loop_count,expression). For example:
mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(1000000,1+1); +------------------------+ | BENCHMARK(1000000,1+1) | +------------------------+ | 0 | +------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.32 sec)
This result was obtained on a Pentium II 400MHz system. It shows that MySQL can execute 1,000,000 simple addition expressions in 0.32 seconds on that system.
All MySQL functions should be very optimized, but there may be some
exceptions. BENCHMARK() is a great tool to find out if this is a
problem with your query.
EXPLAIN Syntax (Get Information About a SELECT)EXPLAIN tbl_name
Or:
EXPLAIN SELECT select_options
The EXPLAIN statement can be used either as a synonym for
DESCRIBE or as a way to obtain information about how MySQL will execute
a SELECT statement:
EXPLAIN tbl_name syntax is synonymous with DESCRIBE tbl_name
or
SHOW COLUMNS FROM tbl_name.
SELECT statement with the keyword EXPLAIN,
MySQL explains how it would process the SELECT, providing
information about how tables are joined and in which order.
This section provides information about the second use of EXPLAIN.
With the help of EXPLAIN, you can see when you must add indexes
to tables to get a faster SELECT that uses indexes to find
records.
If you have a problem with incorrect index usage, you should run
ANALYZE TABLE to update table statistics such as cardinality of
keys, which can affect the choices the optimizer makes. See section 14.5.2.1 ANALYZE TABLE Syntax.
You can also see whether the optimizer joins the tables in an optimal order.
To force the optimizer to use a join order corresponding to the order
in which the tables are named in the SELECT statement, begin the
statement with SELECT STRAIGHT_JOIN rather than just SELECT.
EXPLAIN returns a row of information for each table used in the
SELECT statement. The tables are listed in the output in the order
that MySQL would read them while processing the query. MySQL resolves
all joins using a single-sweep
multi-join method. This means that MySQL reads a row from the first
table, then finds a matching row in the second table, then in the third table,
and so on. When all tables are processed, it outputs the selected columns and
backtracks through the table list until a table is found for which there are
more matching rows. The next row is read from this table and the process
continues with the next table.
In MySQL version 4.1, the EXPLAIN output format was changed to work
better with constructs such as UNION statements, subqueries, and
derived tables. Most notable is the addition of two new columns: id
and select_type. You will not see these columns when using servers
older than MySQL 4.1.
Each output row from EXPLAIN provides information about one table, and
each row consists of the following columns:
id
SELECT identifier. This is the sequential number of the
SELECT within the query.
select_type
SELECT, which can be any of the following:
SIMPLE
SELECT (not using UNION or subqueries)
PRIMARY
SELECT
UNION
SELECT statement in a UNION
DEPENDENT UNION
SELECT statement in a UNION, dependent on outer
subquery
SUBQUERY
SELECT in subquery
DEPENDENT SUBQUERY
SELECT in subquery, dependent on outer subquery
DERIVED
SELECT (subquery in FROM clause)
table
type
system
const join type.
const
const tables are very fast because they are read only once!
const is used when you compare all parts of a
PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE index with constant values. In the
following queries, tbl_name can be used as a const table:
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE primary_key=1; SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE primary_key_part1=1 AND primary_key_part2=2;
eq_ref
const types, this is the best
possible join type. It is used when all parts of an index are used by
the join and the index is a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE index.
eq_ref can be used for indexed columns that are compared using the
= operator. The comparison value can be a constant or an expression
that uses columns from tables that are read before this table.
In the following examples, MySQL can use an eq_ref join to process
ref_table:
SELECT * FROM ref_table,other_table WHERE ref_table.key_column=other_table.column; SELECT * FROM ref_table,other_table WHERE ref_table.key_column_part1=other_table.column AND ref_table.key_column_part2=1;
ref
ref is used
if the join uses only a leftmost prefix of the key or if the key is not
a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE index (in other words, if the join
cannot select a single row based on the key value). If the key that is
used matches only a few rows, this is a good join type.
ref can be used for indexed columns that are compared using the =
operator.
In the following examples, MySQL can use a ref join to process
ref_table:
SELECT * FROM ref_table WHERE key_column=expr; SELECT * FROM ref_table,other_table WHERE ref_table.key_column=other_table.column; SELECT * FROM ref_table,other_table WHERE ref_table.key_column_part1=other_table.column AND ref_table.key_column_part2=1;
ref_or_null
ref, but with the addition that MySQL will
do an extra search for rows that contain NULL values. This join
type optimization is new for MySQL 4.1.1 and is mostly used when resolving
subqueries.
In the following examples, MySQL can use a ref_or_null join to process
ref_table:
SELECT * FROM ref_table WHERE key_column=expr OR key_column IS NULL;See section 7.2.7 How MySQL Optimizes
IS NULL.
index_merge
key column contains a list of indexes used, and
key_len contains a list of the longest key parts for the indexes
used. For more information, see
section 7.2.6 Index Merge Optimization.
unique_subquery
ref for some IN subqueries of the following
form:
value IN (SELECT primary_key FROM single_table WHERE some_expr)
unique_subquery is just an index lookup function that replaces the
subquery completely for better efficiency.
index_subquery
unique_subquery. It replaces IN subqueries, but
it works for non-unique indexes in subqueries of the following form:
value IN (SELECT key_column FROM single_table WHERE some_expr)
range
key column indicates which index is used.
The key_len contains the longest key part that was used.
The ref column will be NULL for this type.
range can be used for when a key column is compared to a
constant using any of the =, <>, >, >=, <,
<=, IS NULL, <=>, BETWEEN, or IN operators:
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_column = 10; SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_column BETWEEN 10 and 20; SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_column IN (10,20,30); SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_part1= 10 AND key_part2 IN (10,20,30);
index
ALL, except that only the index tree
is scanned. This usually is faster than ALL, because the index
file usually is smaller than the data file.
MySQL can use this join type when the query uses only columns that are
part of a single index.
ALL
const, and usually very bad in all other
cases. Normally, you can avoid ALL by adding indexes that allow row
retrieval from the table based on constant values or column values from
earlier tables.
possible_keys
possible_keys column indicates which indexes MySQL could use to
find the rows in this table. Note that this column is totally independent of
the order of the tables as displayed in the output from EXPLAIN. That
means that some of the keys in possible_keys might not be usable in
practice with the generated table order.
If this column is NULL, there are no relevant indexes. In this case,
you may be able to improve the performance of your query by examining
the WHERE clause to see whether it refers to some column or columns
that would be suitable for indexing. If so, create an appropriate index
and check the query with EXPLAIN again.
See section 14.2.2 ALTER TABLE Syntax.
To see what indexes a table has, use SHOW INDEX FROM tbl_name.
key
key column indicates the key (index) that MySQL actually decided
to use. The key is NULL if no index was chosen. To force MySQL
to use or ignore an index listed in the possible_keys column, use
FORCE INDEX, USE INDEX, or IGNORE INDEX in your query.
See section 14.1.7 SELECT Syntax.
For MyISAM and BDB tables, running ANALYZE TABLE
will help the optimizer choose better indexes. For MyISAM tables,
myisamchk --analyze will do the same. See section 14.5.2.1 ANALYZE TABLE Syntax and section 5.7.2 Table Maintenance and Crash Recovery.
key_len
key_len column indicates the length of the key that MySQL
decided to use. The length is NULL if the key column says
NULL. Note that the value of key_len allows you to determine
how many parts of a multiple-part key MySQL will actually use.
ref
ref column shows which columns or constants are used with the
key to select rows from the table.
rows
rows column indicates the number of rows MySQL
believes it must examine to execute the query.
Extra
Distinct
Not exists
LEFT JOIN optimization on the
query and will not examine more rows in this table for the previous row
combination after it finds one row that matches the LEFT JOIN criteria.
Here is an example of the type of query that can be optimized this way:
SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.id=t2.id WHERE t2.id IS NULL;Assume that
t2.id is defined as NOT NULL. In this case,
MySQL will scan t1 and look up the rows in t2 using the values
of t1.id. If MySQL finds a matching row in t2, it knows that
t2.id can never be NULL, and will not scan through the rest
of the rows in t2 that have the same id value. In other
words, for each row in t1, MySQL needs to do only a single lookup
in t2, regardless of how many rows actually match in t2.
range checked for each record (index map: #)range or index_merge access method to
retrieve rows. The applicability criteria are as described in section 7.2.5 Range Optimization
and section 7.2.6 Index Merge Optimization, with the exception that all column values for the
preceding table are known and considered to be constants.
This is not very fast, but is faster than performing a join with no index
at all.
Using filesort
WHERE clause. The keys then are
sorted and the rows are retrieved in sorted order.
See section 7.2.10 How MySQL Optimizes ORDER BY.
Using index
Using temporary
GROUP BY
and ORDER BY clauses that list columns differently.
Using where
WHERE clause will be used to restrict which rows to match
against the next table or send to the client. Unless you specifically intend
to fetch or examine all rows from the table, you may have something wrong
in your query if the Extra value is not Using where
and the table join type is ALL or index.
Extra values of Using filesort and Using temporary.
Using sort_union(...)
Using union(...)
Using intersect(...)
index_merge
join type. See section 7.2.6 Index Merge Optimization for more information.
Using index for group-by
Using index way of accessing a table, Using
index for group-by indicates that MySQL found an index that can be used
to retrieve all columns of a GROUP BY or DISTINCT query
without any extra disk access to the actual table. Additionally, the index
will be used in the most efficient way so that for each group, only a few
index entries will be read. For details, see
section 7.2.11 How MySQL Optimizes GROUP BY.
You can get a good indication of how good a join is by taking the
product of the values in the rows column of the EXPLAIN
output. This should tell you roughly how many rows MySQL must examine to
execute the query. If you restrict queries with the max_join_size
system variable, this product also is used to determine which multiple-table
SELECT statements to execute.
See section 7.5.2 Tuning Server Parameters.
The following example shows how a multiple-table join can be optimized
progressively based on the information provided by EXPLAIN.
Suppose that you have the SELECT statement shown here and you plan to
examine it using EXPLAIN:
EXPLAIN SELECT tt.TicketNumber, tt.TimeIn,
tt.ProjectReference, tt.EstimatedShipDate,
tt.ActualShipDate, tt.ClientID,
tt.ServiceCodes, tt.RepetitiveID,
tt.CurrentProcess, tt.CurrentDPPerson,
tt.RecordVolume, tt.DPPrinted, et.COUNTRY,
et_1.COUNTRY, do.CUSTNAME
FROM tt, et, et AS et_1, do
WHERE tt.SubmitTime IS NULL
AND tt.ActualPC = et.EMPLOYID
AND tt.AssignedPC = et_1.EMPLOYID
AND tt.ClientID = do.CUSTNMBR;
For this example, make the following assumptions:
| Table | Column | Column Type |
tt | ActualPC | CHAR(10)
|
tt | AssignedPC | CHAR(10)
|
tt | ClientID | CHAR(10)
|
et | EMPLOYID | CHAR(15)
|
do | CUSTNMBR | CHAR(15)
|
| Table | Index |
tt | ActualPC
|
tt | AssignedPC
|
tt | ClientID
|
et | EMPLOYID (primary key)
|
do | CUSTNMBR (primary key)
|
tt.ActualPC values are not evenly distributed.
Initially, before any optimizations have been performed, the EXPLAIN
statement produces the following information:
table type possible_keys key key_len ref rows Extra
et ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 74
do ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 2135
et_1 ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 74
tt ALL AssignedPC, NULL NULL NULL 3872
ClientID,
ActualPC
range checked for each record (key map: 35)
Because type is ALL for each table, this output indicates
that MySQL is generating a Cartesian product of all the tables; that is,
every combination of rows. This will take quite a long time, because the
product of the number of rows in each table must be examined. For the case
at hand, this product is 74 * 2135 * 74 * 3872 = 45,268,558,720 rows.
If the tables were bigger, you can only imagine how long it would take.
One problem here is that MySQL can use indexes on columns more efficiently
if they are declared the same. (For ISAM tables, indexes may not be
used at all unless the columns are declared the same.) In this context,
VARCHAR and CHAR are the same unless they are declared as
different lengths. Because tt.ActualPC is declared as CHAR(10)
and et.EMPLOYID is declared as CHAR(15), there is a length
mismatch.
To fix this disparity between column lengths, use ALTER TABLE to
lengthen ActualPC from 10 characters to 15 characters:
mysql> ALTER TABLE tt MODIFY ActualPC VARCHAR(15);
Now tt.ActualPC and et.EMPLOYID are both VARCHAR(15).
Executing the EXPLAIN statement again produces this result:
table type possible_keys key key_len ref rows Extra
tt ALL AssignedPC, NULL NULL NULL 3872 Using
ClientID, where
ActualPC
do ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 2135
range checked for each record (key map: 1)
et_1 ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 74
range checked for each record (key map: 1)
et eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 15 tt.ActualPC 1
This is not perfect, but is much better: The product of the rows
values is now less by a factor of 74. This version is executed in a couple
of seconds.
A second alteration can be made to eliminate the column length mismatches
for the tt.AssignedPC = et_1.EMPLOYID and tt.ClientID =
do.CUSTNMBR comparisons:
mysql> ALTER TABLE tt MODIFY AssignedPC VARCHAR(15),
-> MODIFY ClientID VARCHAR(15);
Now EXPLAIN produces the output shown here:
table type possible_keys key key_len ref rows Extra
et ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 74
tt ref AssignedPC, ActualPC 15 et.EMPLOYID 52 Using
ClientID, where
ActualPC
et_1 eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 15 tt.AssignedPC 1
do eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 15 tt.ClientID 1
This is almost as good as it can get.
The remaining problem is that, by default, MySQL assumes that values
in the tt.ActualPC column are evenly distributed, and that is not the
case for the tt table. Fortunately, it is easy to tell MySQL
to analyze the key distribution:
mysql> ANALYZE TABLE tt;
Now the join is perfect, and EXPLAIN produces this result:
table type possible_keys key key_len ref rows Extra
tt ALL AssignedPC NULL NULL NULL 3872 Using
ClientID, where
ActualPC
et eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 15 tt.ActualPC 1
et_1 eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 15 tt.AssignedPC 1
do eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 15 tt.ClientID 1
Note that the rows column in the output from EXPLAIN is an
educated guess from the MySQL join optimizer. You should check whether the
numbers are even close to the truth. If not, you may get better performance
by using STRAIGHT_JOIN in your SELECT statement and trying
to list the tables in a different order in the FROM clause.
In most cases, you can estimate the performance by counting disk seeks.
For small tables, you can usually find a row in one disk seek (because the
index is probably cached). For bigger tables, you can estimate that,
using B-tree indexes, you will need this many seeks to find a row:
log(row_count) / log(index_block_length / 3 * 2 /
(index_length + data_pointer_length)) +
1.
In MySQL, an index block is usually 1024 bytes and the data
pointer is usually 4 bytes. For a 500,000-row table with an
index length of 3 bytes (medium integer), the formula indicates
log(500,000)/log(1024/3*2/(3+4)) + 1 = 4 seeks.
This index would require storage of about 500,000 * 7 * 3/2 = 5.2MB (assuming a typical index buffer fill ratio of 2/3), so you will probably have much of the index in memory and you will probably need only one or two calls to read data to find the row.
For writes, however, you will need four seek requests (as above) to find where to place the new index and normally two seeks to update the index and write the row.
Note that the preceding discussion doesn't mean that your application
performance will slowly degenerate by log N! As long as everything
is cached by the OS or SQL server, things will become only marginally
slower as the table gets bigger. After the data gets too big to be cached,
things will start to go much slower until your applications is only bound
by disk-seeks (which increase by log N). To avoid this, increase the key
cache size as the data grows. For MyISAM tables, the key cache
size is controlled by the key_buffer_size system variable.
See section 7.5.2 Tuning Server Parameters.
SELECT Queries
In general, when you want to make a slow SELECT ... WHERE query
faster, the first thing to check is whether you can add an index.
All references between different tables should usually be done with
indexes. You can use the EXPLAIN statement to determine which
indexes are used for a SELECT.
See section 7.4.5 How MySQL Uses Indexes and
section 7.2.1 EXPLAIN Syntax (Get Information About a SELECT).
Some general tips for speeding up queries on MyISAM tables:
ANALYZE TABLE or
run myisamchk --analyze on a table after it has been loaded with
data. This updates a value for each index part that indicates the average
number of rows that have the same value. (For unique indexes, this is
always 1.) MySQL will use this to decide which index to choose when you
join two tables based on a non-constant expression. You can check the
result from the table analysis by using SHOW INDEX FROM tbl_name
and examining the Cardinality value. myisamchk --description
--verbose shows index distribution information.
myisamchk
--sort-index --sort-records=1 (if you want to sort on index 1). This is
a good way to make queries faster if you have a unique index from which
you want to read all records in order according to the index. Note that
the first time you sort a large table this way, it may take a long time.
WHERE Clauses
This section discusses optimizations that can be made for processing
WHERE clauses. The examples use SELECT statements, but
the same optimizations apply for WHERE clauses in DELETE
and UPDATE statements.
Note that work on the MySQL optimizer is ongoing, so this section is incomplete. MySQL does many optimizations, not all of which are documented here.
Some of the optimizations performed by MySQL are listed here:
((a AND b) AND c OR (((a AND b) AND (c AND d)))) -> (a AND b AND c) OR (a AND b AND c AND d)
(a<b AND b=c) AND a=5 -> b>5 AND b=c AND a=5
(B>=5 AND B=5) OR (B=6 AND 5=5) OR (B=7 AND 5=6) -> B=5 OR B=6
COUNT(*) on a single table without a WHERE is retrieved
directly from the table information for MyISAM and HEAP tables.
This is also done for any NOT NULL expression when used with only one
table.
SELECT statements are impossible and returns no rows.
HAVING is merged with WHERE if you don't use GROUP BY
or group functions (COUNT(), MIN(), and so on).
WHERE is constructed to get a fast
WHERE evaluation for the table and also to skip records as
soon as possible.
WHERE clause on a PRIMARY KEY
or a UNIQUE index, where all index parts are compared to constant
expressions and are defined as NOT NULL.
SELECT * FROM t WHERE primary_key=1;
SELECT * FROM t1,t2
WHERE t1.primary_key=1 AND t2.primary_key=t1.id;
ORDER BY and GROUP
BY clauses come from the same table, that table is preferred first when
joining.
ORDER BY clause and a different GROUP BY
clause, or if the ORDER BY or GROUP BY contains columns
from tables other than the first table in the join queue, a temporary
table is created.
SQL_SMALL_RESULT, MySQL uses an in-memory
temporary table.
HAVING clause
are skipped.
Some examples of queries that are very fast:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tbl_name;
SELECT MIN(key_part1),MAX(key_part1) FROM tbl_name;
SELECT MAX(key_part2) FROM tbl_name
WHERE key_part1=constant;
SELECT ... FROM tbl_name
ORDER BY key_part1,key_part2,... LIMIT 10;
SELECT ... FROM tbl_name
ORDER BY key_part1 DESC, key_part2 DESC, ... LIMIT 10;
The following queries are resolved using only the index tree, assuming that the indexed columns are numeric:
SELECT key_part1,key_part2 FROM tbl_name WHERE key_part1=val;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tbl_name
WHERE key_part1=val1 AND key_part2=val2;
SELECT key_part2 FROM tbl_name GROUP BY key_part1;
The following queries use indexing to retrieve the rows in sorted order without a separate sorting pass:
SELECT ... FROM tbl_name
ORDER BY key_part1,key_part2,... ;
SELECT ... FROM tbl_name
ORDER BY key_part1 DESC, key_part2 DESC, ... ;
The range access method uses a single index to retrieve a subset
of table records that are contained within one or several index value
intervals. It can be used for a single-part or multiple-part index.
A detailed description of how intervals are extracted from the
WHERE clause is given in the following sections.
For a single-part index, index value intervals can be conveniently
represented by corresponding conditions in the WHERE clause, so
we'll talk about ``range conditions'' instead of intervals.
The definition of a range condition for a single-part index is as follows:
BTREE and HASH indexes, comparison of a key part with
a constant value is a range condition when using the =, <=>,
IN, IS NULL, or IS NOT NULL operators.
BTREE indexes, comparison of a key part with a constant
value is a range condition when using the >, <, >=,
<=, BETWEEN, !=, or <> operators, or LIKE
'pattern' (where 'pattern' doesn't start with a
wildcard).
OR
or AND form a range condition.
``Constant value'' in the preceding descriptions means one of the following:
const or system table from the the same join
Here are some examples of queries with range conditions in the
WHERE clause:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE key_col > 1 AND key_col < 10; SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE key_col = 1 OR key_col IN (15,18,20); SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE key_col LIKE 'ab%' OR key_col BETWEEN 'bar' AND 'foo';
Note that some non-constant values may be converted to constants during the constant propagation phase.
MySQL tries to extract range conditions from the WHERE clause for
each of the possible indexes. During the extraction process, conditions
that can't be used for constructing the range condition are dropped,
conditions that produce overlapping ranges are combined, and conditions that
produce empty ranges are removed.
For example, consider the following statement, where key1 is an
indexed column and nonkey is not indexed:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE (key1 < 'abc' AND (key1 LIKE 'abcde%' OR key1 LIKE '%b')) OR (key1 < 'bar' AND nonkey = 4) OR (key1 < 'uux' AND key1 > 'z');
The extraction process for key key1 is as follows:
WHERE clause:
(key1 < 'abc' AND (key1 LIKE 'abcde%' OR key1 LIKE '%b')) OR (key1 < 'bar' AND nonkey = 4) OR (key1 < 'uux' AND key1 > 'z')
nonkey = 4 and key1 LIKE '%b' because they cannot be
used for a range scan. The right way to remove them is to replace them
with TRUE, so that we don't miss any matching records when doing
the range scan. Having replaced them with TRUE, we get:
(key1 < 'abc' AND (key1 LIKE 'abcde%' OR TRUE)) OR (key1 < 'bar' AND TRUE) OR (key1 < 'uux' AND key1 > 'z')
(key1 LIKE 'abcde%' OR TRUE) is always true
(key1 < 'uux' AND key1 > 'z') is always false
(key1 < 'abc' AND TRUE) OR (key1 < 'bar' AND TRUE) OR (FALSE)Removing unnecessary
TRUE and FALSE constants, we obtain
(key1 < 'abc') OR (key1 < 'bar')
(key1 < 'bar')
In general (and as demonstrated in the example), the condition used for
a range scan is less restrictive than the WHERE clause. MySQL will
perform an additional check to filter out rows that satisfy the range
condition but not the full WHERE clause.
The range condition extraction algorithm can handle nested
AND/OR constructs of arbitrary depth, and its output doesn't
depend on the order in which conditions appear in WHERE clause.
Range conditions on a multiple-part index are an extension of range conditions for a single-part index. A range condition on a multiple-part index restricts index records to lie within one or several key tuple intervals. Key tuple intervals are defined over a set of key tuples, using ordering from the index.
For example, consider a multiple-part index defined as
key1(key_part1, key_part2, key_part3), and the
following set of key tuples listed in key order:
key_part1 key_part2 key_part3 NULL 1 'abc' NULL 1 'xyz' NULL 2 'foo' 1 1 'abc' 1 1 'xyz' 1 2 'abc' 2 1 'aaa'
The condition key_part1 = 1 defines this interval:
(1, -inf, -inf) <= (key_part1, key_part2, key_part3) < (1, +inf, +inf)
The interval covers the 4th, 5th, and 6th tuples in the preceding data set and can be used by the range access method.
By contrast, the condition key_part3 = 'abc' does not define a single
interval and cannot be used by the range access method.
The following descriptions indicate how range conditions work for multiple-part indexes in greater detail.
HASH indexes, each interval containing identical values
can be used. This means that the interval can be produced only for
conditions in the following form:
key_part1 cmp const1
AND key_part2 cmp const2
AND ...
AND key_partN cmp constN;
Here, const1, const2, ... are constants, cmp is one of
the =, <=>, or IS NULL comparison operators, and the
conditions cover all index parts. (That is, there are N conditions,
one for each part of an N-part index.)
See section 7.2.5.1 Range Access Method for Single-Part Indexes for the definition of
what is considered to be a constant.
For example, the following is a range condition for a three-part
HASH index:
key_part1 = 1 AND key_part2 IS NULL AND key_part3 = 'foo'
BTREE index, an interval might be usable for conditions
combined with AND, where each condition compares a key part with
a constant value using =, <=>, IS NULL, >,
<, >=, <=, !=, <>, BETWEEN, or
LIKE 'pattern' (where 'pattern' doesn't start
with a wildcard). An interval can be used as long as it is possible to
determine a single key tuple containing all records that match the condition
(or two intervals if <> or != is used). For example, for
this condition:
key_part1 = 'foo' AND key_part2 >= 10 AND key_part3 > 10The single interval will be:
('foo', 10, 10)
< (key_part1, key_part2, key_part3)
< ('foo', +inf, +inf)
It is possible that
the created interval will contain more records than the initial condition.
For example, the preceding interval includes the value ('foo', 11, 0),
which does not satisfy the original condition.
OR, they form a condition that covers a set of records
contained within the union of their intervals. If the conditions are combined
with AND, they form a condition that covers a set of records
contained within the intersection of their intervals. For example, for
this condition on a two-part index:
(key_part1 = 1 AND key_part2 < 2) OR (key_part1 > 5)The intervals will be:
(1, -inf) < (key_part1, key_part2) < (1, 2) (5, -inf) < (key_part1, key_part2)In this example, the interval on the first line uses one key part for the left bound and two key parts for the right bound. The interval on the second line uses only one key part. The
key_len column in the EXPLAIN
output indicates the maximum length of the key prefix used.
In some cases, key_len may indicate that a key part was used, but
that might be not what you would expect. Suppose that key_part1
and key_part2 can be NULL. Then the key_len column
will display two key part lengths for the following condition:
key_part1 >= 1 AND key_part2 < 2But in fact, the condition will be converted to this:
key_part1 >= 1 AND key_part2 IS NOT NULL
section 7.2.5.1 Range Access Method for Single-Part Indexes describes how optimizations are performed to combine or eliminate intervals for range conditions on single-part index. Analogous steps are performed for range conditions on multiple-part keys.
The Index Merge (index_merge) method is used to retrieve rows with
several ref, ref_or_null, or range scans and merge
the results into one. This method is employed when the table condition
is a disjunction of conditions for which ref, ref_or_null,
or range could be used with different keys.
This ``join'' type optimization is new in MySQL 5.0.0, and represents a significant change in behavior with regard to indexes, because the old rule was that the server is only ever able to use at most one index for each referenced table.
In EXPLAIN output, this method appears as index_merge in the
type column. In this case, the key column contains a list of
indexes used, and key_len contains a list of the longest key parts
for those indexes.
Examples:
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_part1 = 10 OR key_part2 = 20;
SELECT * FROM tbl_name
WHERE (key_part1 = 10 OR key_part2 = 20) AND non_key_part=30;
SELECT * FROM t1, t2
WHERE (t1.key1 IN (1,2) OR t1.key2 LIKE 'value%')
AND t2.key1=t1.some_col;
SELECT * FROM t1, t2
WHERE t1.key1=1
AND (t2.key1=t1.some_col OR t2.key2=t1.some_col2);
The Index Merge method has several access algorithms (seen in the
Extra field of EXPLAIN output):
The following sections describe these methods in greater detail.
Note: The Index Merge optimization algorithm has the following known deficiencies:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE (goodkey1 < 10 OR goodkey2 < 20) AND badkey < 30;For this query, two plans are possible:
(goodkey1 < 10 OR goodkey2 < 20)
condition.
badkey < 30 condition.
index_merge by using
IGNORE INDEX or FORCE INDEX. The following queries will be
executed using Index Merge:
SELECT * FROM t1 FORCE INDEX(goodkey1,goodkey2) WHERE (goodkey1 < 10 OR goodkey2 < 20) AND badkey < 30; SELECT * FROM t1 IGNORE INDEX(badkey) WHERE (goodkey1 < 10 OR goodkey2 < 20) AND badkey < 30;
WHERE clause with deep
AND/OR nesting and MySQL doesn't choose the optimal plan,
try distributing terms using the following identity laws:
(x AND y) OR z = (x OR z) AND (y OR z) (x OR y) AND z = (x AND z) OR (y AND z)
The choice between different possible variants of the index_merge
access method and other access methods is based on cost estimates of
various available options.
This access algorithm can be employed when a WHERE clause was
converted to several range conditions on different keys combined with
AND, and each condition is one of the following:
key_part1=const1 AND key_part2=const2 ... AND key_partN=constN
InnoDB
or BDB
table.
Here are some examples:
SELECT * FROM innodb_table WHERE primary_key < 10 AND key_col1=20; SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE (key1_part1=1 AND key1_part2=2) AND key2=2;
The Index Merge intersection algorithm performs simultaneous scans on all used indexes and produces the intersection of row sequences that it receives from the merged index scans.
If all columns used in the query are covered by the used indexes, full
table records will not be retrieved (EXPLAIN output will contain
Using index in Extra field in this case). Here is an example
of such query:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t1 WHERE key1=1 AND key2=1;
If the used indexes don't cover all columns used in the query, full records will be retrieved only when the range conditions for all used keys are satisfied.
If one of the merged conditions is a condition over a primary key of an
InnoDB or BDB table, it is not used for record retrieval,
but is used to filter out records retrieved using other conditions.
The applicability criteria for this algorithm are similar to those of the
Index Merge method intersection algorithm. The algorithm can be
employed when the table WHERE clause was converted to several range
conditions on different keys combined with OR, and each condition
is one of the following:
key_part1=const1 AND key_part2=const2 ... AND key_partN=constN
InnoDB or BDB table.
Here are some examples:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE key1=1 OR key2=2 OR key3=3; SELECT * FROM innodb_table WHERE (key1=1 AND key2=2) OR (key3='foo' AND key4='bar') AND key5=5;
This access algorithm is employed when the WHERE clause was converted
to several range conditions combined by OR, but for which the
Index Merge method union algorithm is not applicable.
Here are some examples:
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_col1 < 10 OR key_col2 < 20;
SELECT * FROM tbl_name
WHERE (key_col1 > 10 OR key_col2 = 20) AND nonkey_col=30;
The difference between the sort-union algorithm and the union algorithm is that the sort-union algorithm must first fetch row IDs for all records and sort them before returning any records.
IS NULL
MySQL can do the same optimization on col_name IS NULL that it can do
with col_name = constant_value. For example, MySQL can use
indexes and ranges to search for NULL with IS NULL.
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_col IS NULL;
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_col <=> NULL;
SELECT * FROM tbl_name
WHERE key_col=const1 OR key_col=const2 OR key_col IS NULL;
If a WHERE clause includes a col_name IS NULL condition for a
column that is declared as NOT NULL, that expression will be
optimized away. This optimization does not occur in cases when the column
might produce NULL anyway; for example, if it comes from a table on
the right side of a LEFT JOIN.
MySQL 4.1.1 and up can additionally optimize the combination
col_name = expr AND col_name IS NULL,
a form that is common in resolved subqueries.
EXPLAIN will show ref_or_null when this
optimization is used.
This optimization can handle one IS NULL for any key part.
Some examples of queries that are optimized, assuming that there is an index
on columns a and b of table t2:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE t1.a=expr OR t1.a IS NULL;
SELECT * FROM t1, t2 WHERE t1.a=t2.a OR t2.a IS NULL;
SELECT * FROM t1, t2
WHERE (t1.a=t2.a OR t2.a IS NULL) AND t2.b=t1.b;
SELECT * FROM t1, t2
WHERE t1.a=t2.a AND (t2.b=t1.b OR t2.b IS NULL);
SELECT * FROM t1, t2
WHERE (t1.a=t2.a AND t2.a IS NULL AND ...)
OR (t1.a=t2.a AND t2.a IS NULL AND ...);
ref_or_null works by first doing a read on the reference key,
and then a separate search for rows with a NULL key value.
Note that the optimization can handle only one IS NULL level.
In the following query, MySQL will use key lookups only on the expression
(t1.a=t2.a AND t2.a IS NULL) and not be able to use the key part on
b:
SELECT * FROM t1, t2
WHERE (t1.a=t2.a AND t2.a IS NULL)
OR (t1.b=t2.b AND t2.b IS NULL);
DISTINCT
DISTINCT combined with ORDER BY will
need a temporary table in many cases.
Note that because DISTINCT may use GROUP BY, you should be
aware of how MySQL works with columns in ORDER BY or HAVING
clauses that are not part of the selected columns.
See section 13.9.3 GROUP BY with Hidden Fields.
In most cases, a DISTINCT clause can be considered as a special case
of GROUP BY. For example, the following two queries are equivalent:
SELECT DISTINCT(c1, c2, c3) FROM t1 WHERE c1 > const; SELECT c1, c2, c3 FROM t1 WHERE c1 > const GROUP BY c1, c2, c3;
Due to this equivalence, the optimizations applicable to GROUP BY
queries can be also applied to queries with a DISTINCT clause. Thus,
for more details on the optimization possibilities for DISTINCT
queries, see section 7.2.11 How MySQL Optimizes GROUP BY.
When combining LIMIT row_count with DISTINCT, MySQL stops
as soon as it finds row_count unique rows.
If you don't use columns from all tables named in a query, MySQL stops
scanning the not-used tables as soon as it finds the first match.
In the following case, assuming that t1 is used before t2
(which you can check with EXPLAIN), MySQL stops reading from t2
(for any particular row in t1) when the first row in t2
is found:
SELECT DISTINCT t1.a FROM t1, t2 where t1.a=t2.a;
LEFT JOIN and RIGHT JOIN
A LEFT JOIN B join_condition is implemented in MySQL as follows:
B is set to depend on table A and all tables
on which A depends.
A is set to depend on all tables (except B)
that are used in the LEFT JOIN condition.
LEFT JOIN condition is used to decide how to retrieve rows
from table B. (In other words, any condition in the WHERE clause
is not used.)
WHERE optimizations are done.
A that matches the WHERE clause, but there
is no row in B that matches the ON condition,
an extra B row is generated with all columns set to NULL.
LEFT JOIN to find rows that don't exist in some
table and you have the following test: col_name IS NULL in the
WHERE part, where col_name is a column that is declared as
NOT NULL, MySQL stops searching for more rows
(for a particular key combination) after it has found one row that
matches the LEFT JOIN condition.
RIGHT JOIN is implemented analogously to LEFT JOIN, with the
roles of the tables reversed.
The join optimizer calculates the order in which tables should be joined.
The table read order forced by LEFT JOIN and STRAIGHT_JOIN
helps the join optimizer do its work much more quickly, because there are
fewer table permutations to check.
Note that this means that if you do a query of the following type,
MySQL will do a full scan on b because the LEFT JOIN forces
it to be read before d:
SELECT *
FROM a,b LEFT JOIN c ON (c.key=a.key) LEFT JOIN d ON (d.key=a.key)
WHERE b.key=d.key;
The fix in this case is to rewrite the query as follows:
SELECT *
FROM b,a LEFT JOIN c ON (c.key=a.key) LEFT JOIN d ON (d.key=a.key)
WHERE b.key=d.key;
Starting from 4.0.14, MySQL does the following LEFT JOIN optimization:
If the WHERE condition is always false for the generated
NULL row, the LEFT JOIN is changed to a normal join.
For example, the WHERE clause would be
false in the following query
if t2.column1 would be NULL:
SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON (column1) WHERE t2.column2=5;
Therefore, it's safe to convert the query to a normal join:
SELECT * FROM t1, t2 WHERE t2.column2=5 AND t1.column1=t2.column1;
This can be made faster because MySQL can now use table t2 before
table t1 if this would result in a better query plan. To force a
specific table order, use STRAIGHT_JOIN.
ORDER BY
In some cases, MySQL can use an index to satisfy an ORDER BY
clause without doing any extra sorting.
The index can also be used even if the ORDER BY doesn't match the
index exactly, as long as all the unused index parts and all the extra
are ORDER BY columns are constants in the WHERE
clause. The following queries will use the index to resolve the
ORDER BY part:
SELECT * FROM t1 ORDER BY key_part1,key_part2,... ;
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE key_part1=constant ORDER BY key_part2;
SELECT * FROM t1 ORDER BY key_part1 DESC, key_part2 DESC;
SELECT * FROM t1
WHERE key_part1=1 ORDER BY key_part1 DESC, key_part2 DESC;
In some cases, MySQL cannot use indexes to resolve the ORDER
BY, although it still will use indexes to find the rows that
match the WHERE clause. These cases include the following:
ORDER BY on different keys:
SELECT * FROM t1 ORDER BY key1, key2;
ORDER BY on non-consecutive key parts:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE key2=constant ORDER BY key_part2;
ASC and DESC:
SELECT * FROM t1 ORDER BY key_part1 DESC, key_part2 ASC;
ORDER BY:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE key2=constant ORDER BY key1;
ORDER
BY are not all from the first non-constant table that is used to
retrieve rows. (This is the first table in the EXPLAIN output that
doesn't have a const join type.)
ORDER BY and GROUP BY expressions.
HASH index in a HEAP table.
With EXPLAIN SELECT ... ORDER BY, you can check whether MySQL can use
indexes to resolve the query. It cannot if you see Using filesort in
the Extra column.
See section 7.2.1 EXPLAIN Syntax (Get Information About a SELECT).
In those cases where MySQL must sort the result, it uses the following
filesort algorithm before MySQL 4.1:
WHERE clause are skipped.
sort_buffer_size
system variable.
MERGEBUFF (7) regions to one block in
another temporary file. Repeat until all blocks from the first file
are in the second file.
MERGEBUFF2 (15)
blocks left.
read_rnd_buffer_size system variable.
The code for this step is in the `sql/records.cc' source file.
One problem with this approach is that it reads rows twice: One time when
evaluating the WHERE clause, and again after sorting the pair values.
And even if the rows were accessed successively the first time (for example,
if a table scan is done), the second time they are accessed randomly. (The
sort keys are ordered, but the row positions are not.)
In MySQL 4.1 and up, a filesort optimization is used that records not
only the sort key value and row position, but also the columns required for
the query. This avoids reading the rows twice. The modified filesort
algorithm works like this:
WHERE clause, as before.
Using the modified filesort algorithm, the tuples are longer than the
pairs used in the original method, and fewer of them fit in the sort buffer
(the size of which is given by sort_buffer_size). As a result, it is
possible for the extra I/O to make the modified approach slower, not faster.
To avoid a slowdown, the optimization is used only if the total size of the
extra columns in the sort tuple does not exceed the value of the
max_length_for_sort_data system variable. (A symptom of setting the
value of this variable too high is that you will see high disk activity and
low CPU activity.)
If you want to increase ORDER BY speed, first see whether you can get
MySQL to use indexes rather than an extra sorting phase. If this is not
possible, you can try the following strategies:
sort_buffer_size variable.
read_rnd_buffer_size variable.
tmpdir to point to a dedicated filesystem with lots of empty
space. If you use MySQL 4.1 or later, this option accepts several paths
that are used in round-robin fashion. Paths should be separated by colon
characters (`:') on Unix and semicolon characters (`;') on
Windows, NetWare, and OS/2. You can use this feature to spread the load
across several directories. Note: The paths should be for
directories in filesystems that are located on different physical
disks, not different partitions of the same disk.
By default, MySQL sorts all GROUP BY col1, col2, ... queries as if
you specified ORDER BY col1, col2, ... in the query as well. If you
include an ORDER BY clause explicitly that contains the same column
list, MySQL optimizes it away without any speed penalty, although the sorting
still occurs. If a query includes GROUP BY but you want to avoid the
overhead of sorting the result, you can suppress sorting by specifying
ORDER BY NULL. For example:
INSERT INTO foo SELECT a, COUNT(*) FROM bar GROUP BY a ORDER BY NULL;
GROUP BY
The most general way to satisfy a GROUP BY clause is to scan the whole
table and create a new temporary table where all rows from each group are
consecutive, and then use this temporary table to discover groups and apply
aggregate functions (if any). In some cases, MySQL is able to do much better
than that and to avoid creation of temporary tables by using index access.
The most important preconditions for using indexes for GROUP BY are
that all GROUP BY columns reference attributes from the same index,
and the index stores its keys in order (for example, this is a B-Tree index,
and not a HASH index). Whether usage of temporary tables can be replaced by
index access also depends on which parts of an index are used in a query, the
conditions specified for these parts, and the selected aggregate functions.
There are two ways to execute a GROUP BY query via index access,
as detailed in the following sections. In the first method, the grouping
operation is applied together with all range predicates (if any). The second
method first performs a range scan, and then groups the resulting tuples.
The most efficient way is when the index is used to directly retrieve
the group fields. With this access method, MySQL uses the property of
some index types (for example, B-Trees) that the keys are ordered. This
property allows use of lookup groups in an index without having to consider
all keys in the index that satisfy all WHERE conditions. Since
this access method considers only a fraction of the keys in an index,
it is called ``loose index scan.'' When there is no WHERE clause,
a loose index scan will read as many keys as the number of groups, which
may be a much smaller number than all keys. If the WHERE clause
contains range predicates (described in section 7.2.1 EXPLAIN Syntax (Get Information About a SELECT),
under the range join type), a loose index scan looks up the first key of
each group that satisfies the range conditions, and again reads the least
possible number of keys. This is possible under the following conditions:
GROUP BY includes the first consecutive parts of the index
(if instead of GROUP BY, the query has a DISTINCT clause,
then all distinct attributes refer to the beginning of the index).
MIN() and MAX(),
and all of them refer to the same column.
GROUP BY referenced in the
query must be constants (that is, they must be referenced in equalities
with constants), except for the argument of MIN() or MAX()
functions.
The EXPLAIN output for such queries shows Using index for
group-by in the Extra column.
The following queries provide several examples that fall into this
category, assuming there is an index idx(c1, c2, c3) on table
t1(c1,c2,c3,c4):
SELECT c1, c2 FROM t1 GROUP BY c1, c2; SELECT DISTINCT(c1, c2) FROM t1; SELECT c1, MIN(c2) FROM t1 GROUP BY c1; SELECT c1, c2 FROM t1 WHERE c1 < const GROUP BY c1, c2; SELECT MAX(c3), MIN(c3), c1, c2 FROM t1 WHERE c2 > const GROUP BY c1, c2; SELECT c2 FROM t1 WHERE c1 < const GROUP BY c1, c2; SELECT c1, c2 FROM t1 WHERE c3 = const GROUP BY c1, c2;
The following queries cannot be executed with this quick select method, for the reasons given:
MIN() or MAX():
SELECT c1, SUM(c2) FROM t1 GROUP BY c1;
GROUP BY do not refer to the beginning of the index:
SELECT c1,c2 FROM t1 GROUP BY c2, c3;
GROUP BY parts,
and for which there is no equality with a constant:
SELECT c1,c3 FROM t1 GROUP BY c1, c2;
A tight index scan may be either a full index scan or a range index scan, depending on the query conditions.
When the conditions for a loose index scan are not met, it is still
possible to avoid creation of temporary tables for GROUP BY
queries. If there are range conditions in the WHERE clause, this
method will read only the keys that satisfy these conditions. Otherwise,
it performs an index scan. Since this method reads all keys in each range
defined by the WHERE clause, or scans the whole index if there are
no range conditions, we term it a ``tight index scan.'' Notice that with a
tight index scan, the grouping operation is performed after all keys that
satisfy the range conditions have been found.
For this method to work, it is sufficient that for all columns in a query
referring to key parts before or in between the GROUP BY key parts,
there is a constant equality condition. The constants from the equality
conditions fill in the ``gaps'' in the search keys so that it is possible
to form complete prefixes of the index. Then these index prefixes can
be used for index lookups. If we require sorting of the GROUP BY
result, and it is possible to form search keys that are prefixes of the
index, MySQL also will avoid sorting because searching with prefixes in
an ordered index already retrieves all keys in order.
The following queries will not work with the first method above, but will
still work with the second index access method (assuming we have the
aforementioned index idx on table t1):
GROUP BY, but it is covered by the condition (c2 = 'a').
SELECT c1, c2, c3 FROM t1 WHERE c2 = 'a' GROUP BY c1, c3;
GROUP BY does not begin from the first key part, but there is a
condition that provides a constant for that key part:
SELECT c1, c2, c3 FROM t1 WHERE c1 = 'a' GROUP BY c2, c3;
LIMIT
In some cases, MySQL will handle a query differently when you are
using LIMIT row_count and not using HAVING:
LIMIT, MySQL
uses indexes in some cases when normally it would prefer to do a
full table scan.
LIMIT row_count with ORDER BY, MySQL ends the
sorting as soon as it has found the first row_count lines rather
than sorting the whole table.
LIMIT row_count with DISTINCT, MySQL stops
as soon as it finds row_count unique rows.
GROUP BY can be resolved by reading the key in order
(or doing a sort on the key) and then calculating summaries until the
key value changes. In this case, LIMIT row_count will not calculate any
unnecessary GROUP BY values.
SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS.
LIMIT 0 always quickly returns an empty set. This is useful
to check the query or to get the column types of the result columns.
LIMIT row_count is used to calculate how much space is required.
The output from EXPLAIN will show ALL in the type
column when MySQL uses a table scan to resolve a query. This usually happens
under the following conditions:
ON or WHERE clause
for indexed columns.
WHERE Clauses.
For small tables, a table scan often is appropriate. For large tables, try the following techniques to avoid having the optimizer incorrectly choose a table scan:
ANALYZE TABLE tbl_name to update the key distributions for the
scanned table. See section 14.5.2.1 ANALYZE TABLE Syntax.
FORCE INDEX for the scanned table to tell MySQL that table
scans are very expensive compared to using the given index.
See section 14.1.7 SELECT Syntax.
SELECT * FROM t1, t2 FORCE INDEX (index_for_column) WHERE t1.col_name=t2.col_name;
mysqld with the --max-seeks-for-key=1000 option or use
SET max_seeks_for_key=1000 to tell the optimizer to assume that no
key scan will cause more than 1,000 key seeks.
See section 5.2.3 Server System Variables.
INSERT StatementsThe time to insert a record is determined by the following factors, where the numbers indicate approximate proportions:
This does not take into consideration the initial overhead to open tables, which is done once for each concurrently running query.
The size of the table slows down the insertion of indexes by log N, assuming B-tree indexes.
You can use the following methods to speed up inserts:
INSERT statements with multiple VALUES lists to insert several
rows at a time. This is much faster (many times faster in some cases) than
using separate single-row INSERT statements. If you are adding data
to a non-empty table, you may tune the bulk_insert_buffer_size
variable to make it even faster.
See section 5.2.3 Server System Variables.
INSERT DELAYED statement. See section 14.1.4 INSERT Syntax.
MyISAM tables you can insert rows at the same time that
SELECT statements are running if there are no deleted rows in the
tables.
LOAD DATA INFILE. This
is usually 20 times faster than using a lot of INSERT statements.
See section 14.1.5 LOAD DATA INFILE Syntax.
LOAD DATA INFILE run even
faster when the table has many indexes. Use the following procedure:
CREATE TABLE.
FLUSH TABLES statement or a mysqladmin flush-tables
command.
myisamchk --keys-used=0 -rq /path/to/db/tbl_name. This will
remove all use of all indexes for the table.
LOAD DATA INFILE. This will not
update any indexes and will therefore be very fast.
myisampack
to make it smaller. See section 15.1.3.3 Compressed Table Characteristics.
myisamchk -r -q
/path/to/db/tbl_name. This will create the index tree in memory before
writing it to disk, which is much faster because it avoids lots of disk
seeks. The resulting index tree is also perfectly balanced.
FLUSH TABLES statement or a mysqladmin flush-tables
command.
LOAD DATA INFILE also performs the preceding optimization
if you insert into an empty MyISAM table; the main difference is that you can let
myisamchk allocate much more temporary memory for the index creation
than you might want the server to allocate for index re-creation when it
executes the LOAD DATA INFILE statement.
As of MySQL 4.0, you can also use
ALTER TABLE tbl_name DISABLE KEYS instead of
myisamchk --keys-used=0 -rq /path/to/db/tbl_name and
ALTER TABLE tbl_name ENABLE KEYS instead of
myisamchk -r -q /path/to/db/tbl_name. This way you can also skip the
FLUSH TABLES steps.
INSERT operations that are done
with multiple statements by locking your tables:
LOCK TABLES a WRITE; INSERT INTO a VALUES (1,23),(2,34),(4,33); INSERT INTO a VALUES (8,26),(6,29); UNLOCK TABLES;A performance benefit occurs because the index buffer is flushed to disk only onc, after all
INSERT statements have completed. Normally there would
be as many index buffer flushes as there are different INSERT
statements. Explicit locking statements are not needed if you can insert
all rows with a single statement.
For transactional tables, you should use BEGIN/COMMIT instead of
LOCK TABLES to get a speedup.
Locking also lowers the total time of multiple-connection tests, although the
maximum wait time for individual connections might go up because they wait for
locks. For example:
Connection 1 does 1000 inserts Connections 2, 3, and 4 do 1 insert Connection 5 does 1000 insertsIf you don't use locking, connections 2, 3, and 4 will finish before 1 and 5. If you use locking, connections 2, 3, and 4 probably will not finish before 1 or 5, but the total time should be about 40% faster.
INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations are very
fast in MySQL, but you will obtain better overall performance by
adding locks around everything that does more than about five inserts or
updates in a row. If you do very many inserts in a row, you could do a
LOCK TABLES followed by an UNLOCK TABLES once in a while
(about each 1,000 rows) to allow other threads access to the table. This
would still result in a nice performance gain.
INSERT is still much slower for loading data than LOAD DATA
INFILE, even when using the strategies just outlined.
MyISAM tables, for both LOAD DATA
INFILE and INSERT, enlarge the key cache by increasing the
key_buffer_size system variable.
See section 7.5.2 Tuning Server Parameters.
UPDATE Statements
Update statements are optimized as a SELECT query with the additional
overhead of a write. The speed of the write depends on the amount of
data being updated and the number of indexes that are updated. Indexes that
are not changed will not be updated.
Also, another way to get fast updates is to delay updates and then do many updates in a row later. Doing many updates in a row is much quicker than doing one at a time if you lock the table.
Note that for a MyISAM table that uses dynamic record format,
updating a record to a longer total length may split the record. If you do
this often, it is very important to use OPTIMIZE TABLE occasionally.
See section 14.5.2.5 OPTIMIZE TABLE Syntax.
DELETE StatementsThe time to delete individual records is exactly proportional to the number of indexes. To delete records more quickly, you can increase the size of the key cache. See section 7.5.2 Tuning Server Parameters.
If you want to delete all rows in the table, use TRUNCATE TABLE
tbl_name rather than DELETE FROM tbl_name.
See section 14.1.9 TRUNCATE Syntax.
This section lists a number of miscellaneous tips for improving query processing speed:
thread_cache_size variable. See section 7.5.2 Tuning Server Parameters.
EXPLAIN
statement. See section 7.2.1 EXPLAIN Syntax (Get Information About a SELECT).
SELECT queries on MyISAM tables that are
updated frequently, to avoid problems with table locking that occur
due to contention between readers and writers.
MyISAM tables that have no deleted rows, you can insert rows at
the end at the same time that another query is reading from the table. If this
is important for you, you should consider using the table in ways that avoid
deleting rows. Another possibility is to run OPTIMIZE TABLE after you
have deleted a lot of rows.
ALTER TABLE ... ORDER BY expr1, expr2, ... if you mostly
retrieve rows in expr1, expr2, ... order. By using this option after
extensive changes to the table, you may be able to get higher performance.
SELECT * FROM tbl_name
WHERE hash_col=MD5(CONCAT(col1,col2))
AND col1='constant' AND col2='constant';
MyISAM tables that change a lot, you should try to avoid all
variable-length columns (VARCHAR, BLOB, and TEXT). The
table will use dynamic record format if it includes even a single
variable-length column.
See section 15 MySQL Storage Engines and Table Types.
MyISAM table with dynamic record format (see above) that you can
change to a fixed record size,
or if you very often need to scan the table but do not need
most of the columns. See section 15 MySQL Storage Engines and Table Types.
UPDATE tbl_name SET count_col=count_col+1 WHERE key_col=constant;This is really important when you use MySQL storage engines such as
MyISAM and ISAM that have only table-level locking (multiple
readers / single writers). This will also give better performance with most
databases, because the row locking manager in this case will have less to do.
BLOB
column. In this case, you must add some extra code in your application to
pack and unpack information in the BLOB values, but this may save a
lot of accesses at some stage. This is practical when you have data that
doesn't conform to a rows-and-columns table structure.
INSERT DELAYED when you do not need to know when your
data is written. This speeds things up because many records can be written
with a single disk write.
INSERT LOW_PRIORITY when you want to give SELECT
statements higher priority than your inserts.
SELECT HIGH_PRIORITY to get retrievals that jump the
queue. That is, the SELECT is done even if there is another client
waiting to do a write.
INSERT statements to store many rows with one
SQL statement (many SQL servers support this).
LOAD DATA INFILE to load large amounts of data. This is
faster than using INSERT statements.
AUTO_INCREMENT columns to generate unique values.
OPTIMIZE TABLE once in a while to avoid fragmentation
with MyISAM tables
when
using a dynamic table format.
See section 15.1.3 MyISAM Table Storage Formats.
HEAP tables when possible to get more speed.
See section 15 MySQL Storage Engines and Table Types.
customer,
use a column name of name instead of customer_name. To make
your names portable to other SQL servers, you should keep them shorter than
18 characters.
MyISAM storage engine directly, you could
get a speed increase of two to five times compared to using the SQL interface.
To be able to do this, the data must be on the same server as
the application, and usually it should only be accessed by one process
(because external file locking is really slow). One could eliminate these
problems by introducing low-level MyISAM commands in the
MySQL server (this could be one easy way to get more
performance if needed). By carefully designing the database interface,
it should be quite easy to support this types of optimization.
MyISAM table with the DELAY_KEY_WRITE=1 table
option makes index updates faster because they are not flushed to disk
until the table is closed. The downside is that if something kills the
server while such a table is open, you should ensure that they are okay by
running the server with the --myisam-recover option, or by
running myisamchk before restarting the server. (However, even in
this case, you should not lose anything by using DELAY_KEY_WRITE,
because the key information can always be generated from the data rows.)
Currently, MySQL supports table-level locking for ISAM,
MyISAM, and MEMORY (HEAP) tables, page-level locking
for BDB tables, and row-level locking for InnoDB tables.
In many cases, you can make an educated guess about which locking type is best for an application, but generally it's very hard to say that a given lock type is better than another. Everything depends on the application and different parts of an application may require different lock types.
To decide whether you want to use a storage engine with row-level locking,
you will want to look at what your application does and what mix of select
and update statements it uses. For example, most Web applications do lots
of selects, very few deletes, updates based mainly on key values, and
inserts into some specific tables. The base MySQL MyISAM setup is
very well tuned for this.
Table locking in MySQL is deadlock-free for storage engines that use table-level locking. Deadlock avoidance is managed by always requesting all needed locks at once at the beginning of a query and always locking the tables in the same order.
The table-locking method MySQL uses for WRITE locks works as follows:
The table-locking method MySQL uses for READ locks works as follows:
When a lock is released, the lock is made available to the threads in the write lock queue, then to the threads in the read lock queue.
This means that if you have many updates for a table, SELECT
statements will wait until there are no more updates.
Starting in MySQL 3.23.33, you can analyze the table lock contention
on your system by checking the Table_locks_waited and
Table_locks_immediate status variables:
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Table%'; +-----------------------+---------+ | Variable_name | Value | +-----------------------+---------+ | Table_locks_immediate | 1151552 | | Table_locks_waited | 15324 | +-----------------------+---------+
As of MySQL 3.23.7 (3.23.25 for Windows), you can freely mix concurrent
INSERT and SELECT statements for a MyISAM table without
locks if the INSERT statements are non-conflicting. That is, you can
insert rows into a MyISAM table at the same time other clients are
reading from it. No conflict occurs if the data file contains no free
blocks in the middle, because in that case, records always are inserted at
the end of the data file. (Holes can result from rows having been deleted
from or updated in the middle of the table.) If there are holes, concurrent
inserts are re-enabled automatically when all holes have been filled with
new data.
If you want to do many INSERT and SELECT operations on a table
when concurrent inserts are not possible, you can insert rows in a temporary
table and update the real table with the records from the temporary table
once in a while. This can be done with the following code:
mysql> LOCK TABLES real_table WRITE, insert_table WRITE; mysql> INSERT INTO real_table SELECT * FROM insert_table; mysql> TRUNCATE TABLE insert_table; mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;
InnoDB uses row locks and BDB uses page locks. For the
InnoDB and BDB storage engines, deadlock is possible. This is
because InnoDB automatically acquires row locks and BDB
acquires page locks during the processing of SQL statements, not at the
start of the transaction.
Advantages of row-level locking:
Disadvantages of row-level locking:
GROUP
BY operations on a large part of the data or if you often must scan the
entire table.
Table locks are superior to page-level or row-level locks in the following cases:
UPDATE tbl_name SET column=value WHERE unique_key_col=key_value; DELETE FROM tbl_name WHERE unique_key_col=key_value;
SELECT combined with concurrent INSERT statements, and very
few UPDATE and DELETE statements.
GROUP BY operations on the entire table without any writers.
Options other than row-level or page-level locking:
Versioning (such as we use in MySQL for concurrent inserts) where you can have one writer at the same time as many readers. This means that the database/table supports different views for the data depending on when you started to access it. Other names for this are time travel, copy on write, or copy on demand.
Copy on demand is in many cases much better than page-level or row-level locking. However, the worst case does use much more memory than when using normal locks.
Instead of using row-level locks, you can use application-level locks,
such as GET_LOCK() and RELEASE_LOCK() in MySQL. These are
advisory locks, so they work only in well-behaved applications.
To achieve a very high lock speed, MySQL uses table locking (instead of
page, row, or column locking) for all storage engines except InnoDB
and BDB.
For InnoDB and BDB tables, MySQL only uses table locking if
you explicitly lock the table with LOCK TABLES. For these table
types, we recommend you to not use LOCK TABLES at all, because
InnoDB uses automatic row-level locking and BDB uses
page-level locking to ensure transaction isolation.
For large tables, table locking is much better than row locking for most applications, but there are some pitfalls.
Table locking enables many threads to read from a table at the same time, but if a thread wants to write to a table, it must first get exclusive access. During the update, all other threads that want to access this particular table must wait until the update is done.
Table updates normally are considered to be more important than table
retrievals, so they are given higher priority. This should ensure that
updates to a table are not ``starved'' even if there is heavy SELECT
activity for the table.
Table locking causes problems in cases such as when a thread is waiting because the disk is full and free space needs to become available before the thread can proceed. In this case, all threads that want to access the problem table will also be put in a waiting state until more disk space is made available.
Table locking is also disadvantageous under the following scenario:
SELECT that takes a long time to run.
UPDATE on the same table. This client
will wait until the SELECT is finished.
SELECT statement on the same table.
Because
UPDATE has higher priority than SELECT, this SELECT
will wait for the UPDATE to finish. It will also wait for the first
SELECT to finish!
The following list describes some ways to avoid or reduce contention caused by table locking:
SELECT statements to run faster. You might have to
create some summary tables to do this.
mysqld with --low-priority-updates. This gives
all statements that update (modify) a table lower priority than SELECT
statements. In this case, the second SELECT statement in the preceding
scenario would execute before the INSERT statement, and would not need
to wait for the first SELECT to finish.
SET LOW_PRIORITY_UPDATES=1 statement.
See section 14.5.3.1 SET Syntax.
INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE
statement lower priority with the LOW_PRIORITY attribute.
SELECT statement higher priority with the
HIGH_PRIORITY attribute. See section 14.1.7 SELECT Syntax.
mysqld with a low value for
the max_write_lock_count system variable to force MySQL to
temporarily elevate the priority of all SELECT statements that are
waiting for a table after a specific number of inserts to the table occur.
This allows READ locks after a certain number of WRITE locks.
INSERT combined with SELECT, switch
to using MyISAM tables, which support concurrent SELECT and
INSERT statements.
INSERT DELAYED
may be of great help.
See section 14.1.4.2 INSERT DELAYED Syntax.
SELECT and DELETE statements,
the LIMIT option to DELETE may help.
See section 14.1.1 DELETE Syntax.
SQL_BUFFER_RESULT with SELECT statements can help to
make the duration of table locks shorter.
See section 14.1.7 SELECT Syntax.
Here are some tips about table locking in MySQL:
LOCK TABLES to speed up things (many updates within
a single lock is much faster than updates without locks). Splitting
table contents into separate tables may also help.
InnoDB or
BDB tables.
See section 16 The InnoDB Storage Engine. See section 15.4 The BDB (BerkeleyDB) Storage Engine.
MySQL keeps row data and index data in separate files. Many (almost all) other databases mix row and index data in the same file. We believe that the MySQL choice is better for a very wide range of modern systems.
Another way to store the row data is to keep the information for each column in a separate area (examples are SDBM and Focus). This will cause