Optimize MySQL
When MySQL uses indexes
Using >, >=, =, <, <=, IF NULL and BETWEEN on a key.
SELECT * FROM `table_name` WHERE `key_part1` = 1 AND `key_part2` > 5;
SELECT * FROM `table_name` WHERE `key_part1` IS NULL;
When you use a LIKE that doesn’t start with a wildcard.
SELECT * FROM `table_name` WHERE `key_part1` LIKE 'jani%'
Retrieving rows from other tables when performing joins.
SELECT * FROM `t1`,`t2` WHERE `t1`.`col` = `t2`.`key_part`
Find the MAX() or MIN() value for a specific index.
SELECT MIN(`key_part2`), MAX(`key_part2`) FROM `table_name` WHERE `key_part1` = 10
ORDER BY or GROUP BY on a prefix of a key.
SELECT * FROM foo ORDER BY key_part1,key_part2,key_part3
When all columns used in the query are part of one key.
SELECT key_part3 FROM table_name WHERE key_part1=1
When MySQL doesn’t use an index
Indexes are NOT used if MySQL can calculate that it will probably be faster
to scan the whole table.
For example if key_part1 is evenly distributed between 1 and 100, it’s not good to use an index in the following query:
SELECT * FROM table_name where key_part1 > 1 and key_part1 < 90
If you are using HEAP tables and you don’t search on all key parts with =
When you use ORDER BY on a HEAP table
If you are not using the first key part
SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE key_part2=1
If you are using LIKE that starts with a wildcard
SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE key_part1 LIKE '%jani%'
When you search on one index and do an ORDER BY on another
SELECT * from table_name WHERE key_part1 = # ORDER BY key2
Learn to use EXPLAIN
Use EXPLAIN on every query that you think is too slow!
Types ALL and range signal a potential problem.
Learn to use SHOW PROCESSLIST
Use SHOW processlist to find out what is going on:
Use KILL in mysql or mysqladmin to kill off runaway threads.
How to find out how MySQL solves a query
Run the following commands and try to understand the output:
SHOW VARIABLES;
SHOW COLUMNS FROM …\G
EXPLAIN SELECT …\G
FLUSH STATUS;
SELECT …;
SHOW STATUS;
MySQL is extremely good
For logging.
When you do many connects; connect is very fast.
Where you use SELECT and INSERT at the same time.
When you don’t combine updates with selects that take a long time.
When most selects/updates are using unique keys.
When you use many tables without long conflicting locks.
When you have big tables (MySQL uses a very compact table format).
Things to avoid with MySQL
Updates to a table or INSERT on a table with deleted rows, combined with SELECTS that take a long time.
HAVING on things you can have in a WHERE clause.
JOINS without using keys or keys which are not unique enough.
JOINS on columns that have different column types.
Using HEAP tables when not using a full key match with =
Forgetting a WHERE clause with UPDATE or DELETE in the MySQL monitor. If you tend to do this, use the –i-am-a-dummy option to the mysq client.
Different locks in MySQL
Internal table locks.
LOCK TABLES (Works on all table types)
GET_LOCK()/RELEASE_LOCK()
Page locks (for BDB tables)
ALTER TABLE also does a table lock on BDB tables.
LOCK TABLES gives you multiple readers on a table or one writer.
Normally a WRITE lock has higher priority than a READ lock to avoid starving the writers. For writers that are not important one can use the LOW_PRIORITY keyword to let the lock handler prefer readers.
UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY SET value=10 WHERE id=10;
Tricks to give MySQL more information to solve things better
Note that you can always comment out a MySQL feature to make the query portable:
SELECT /*! SQL_BUFFER_RESULTS */ ...
SELECT SQL_BUFFER_RESULTS …
Will force MySQL to make a temporary result set. As soon as the temporary set is done, all locks on the tables are released. This can help when you get a problem with table locks or when it takes a long time to transfer the result to the client.
SELECT SQL_SMALL_RESULT ... GROUP BY ...
To tell the optimizer that the result set will only contain a few rows.
SELECT SQL_BIG_RESULT ... GROUP BY ...
To tell the optimizer that the result set will contain many rows.
SELECT STRAIGHT_JOIN ...
Forces the optimizer to join the tables in the order in which they are listed in the FROM clause.
SELECT ... FROM table_name [USE INDEX (index_list) | IGNORE INDEX (index_list)] table_name2
Forces MySQL to use/ignore the listed indexes.
Example of doing transactions
How to do a transaction with MyISAM tables:
mysql> LOCK TABLES trans READ, customer WRITE;
mysql> select sum(value) from trans where customer_id=some_id;
mysql> update customer set total_value=sum_from_previous_statement where customer_id=some_id;
mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;
How to do a transaction with Berkeley DB tables:
mysql> BEGIN WORK;
mysql> select sum(value) from trans where customer_id=some_id;
mysql> update customer set total_value=sum_from_previous_statement where customer_id=some_id;
mysql> COMMIT;
Note that you can often avoid transactions altogether by doing:
UPDATE customer SET value=value+new_value WHERE customer_id=some_id;
Example of using REPLACE
REPLACE works exactly like INSERT, except that if an old record in the table has the same value as a new record on a unique index,
the old record is deleted before the new record is inserted. Instead of using
SELECT 1 FROM t1 WHERE key=#
IF found-row
LOCK TABLES t1
DELETE FROM t1 WHERE key1=#
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (...)
UNLOCK TABLES t1;
ENDIF
Do
REPLACE INTO t1 VALUES (...)
General tips
Use short primary keys. Use numbers, not strings, when joining tables.
When using multi-part keys, the first part should be the most-used key.
When in doubt, use columns with more duplicates first to get better key compression.
If you run the client and MySQL server on the same machine, use sockets instead of TCP/IP when connecting to MySQL (this can give you up to a 7.5 % improvement). You can do this by specifying no hostname or localhost when connecting to the MySQL server. Use –skip-locking (default on some OSes) if possible. This will turn off external locking and will give better performance. Use application-level hashed values instead of using long keys:
SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE hash=MD5(concat(col1,col2)) AND col_1='constant' AND col_2='constant'
Store BLOB’s that you need to access as files in files. Store only the file name in the database.
It is faster to remove all rows than to remove a large part of the rows.
If SQL is not fast enough, take a look at the lower level interfaces to access the data.
Benefits of using MySQL 3.23
MyISAM ; Portable BIG table format
HEAP ; In memory tables
Berkeley DB ; Transactional tables from Sleepycat.
A lot of raised limits
Dynamic character sets
More STATUS variables.
CHECK and REPAIR table.
Faster GROUP BY and DISTINCT
LEFT JOIN … IF NULL optimization.
CREATE TABLE … SELECT
CREATE TEMPORARY table_name (…)
Automatic conversion of temporary HEAP to MyISAM tables Replication mysqlhotcopy script.
Important features that we are actively working on
Improving transactions
Fail safe replication
Text searching
Delete with many tables (Updates with many tables will be done after this.)
Better key cache
Atomic RENAME (RENAME TABLE foo as foo_old, foo_new as foo)
A query cache
MERGE TABLES
A better GUI client
