Are you running MySQL on Debian or Ubuntu with InnoDB? You might want to disable /etc/mysql/debian-start. When you run /etc/init.d/mysql start it runs this script, which runs mysqlcheck, which can destroy performance. It can happen on a server with MyISAM tables, if there are enough tables, but it is far worse on InnoDB. There are [...]
Enum Fields VS Varchar VS Int + Joined table: What is Faster?
January 24, 2008 By 30 Comments
Really often in customers’ application we can see a huge tables with varchar/char fields, with small sets of possible values. These are “state”, “gender”, “status”, “weapon_type”, etc, etc. Frequently we suggest to change such fields to use ENUM column type, but is it really necessary (from performance standpoint)? In this post I’d like to present [...]
The new cool MySQL patch has landed! Check your queries performance!
October 31, 2007 By 16 Comments
Microslow patch is used by many DBAs and developers to accurately time their queries and to catch those which run less than a second as they can also be a performance killer for a busy application. Recently I have started the development of an updated version of the patch. The basic idea is the same [...]
MySQL Performance – eliminating ORDER BY function
October 17, 2007 By 6 Comments
One of the first rules you would learn about MySQL Performance Optimization is to avoid using functions when comparing constants or order by. Ie use indexed_col=N is good. function(indexed_col)=N is bad because MySQL Typically will be unable to use index on the column even if function is very simple such as arithmetic operation. Same can [...]
Possible optimization for sort_merge and UNION ORDER BY LIMIT
September 18, 2007 By 10 Comments
Every so often you need to perform sort results retrieved from MySQL when your WHERE clause goes beyound col=const values which would allow MySQL to still use second portion of the index for the order by. Ranges as well as IN lists make this optimization impossible, not even speaking about index merge optimization. Lets look [...]
Using GROUP BY WITH ROLLUP for Reporting Performance Optimization
September 17, 2007 By 14 Comments
Quite typical query for reporting applications is to find top X values. If you analyze Web Site logs you would look at most popular web pages or search engine keywords which bring you most of the traffic. If you’re looking at ecommerce reporting you may be interested in best selling product or top sales people. [...]
How fast can you sort data with MySQL ?
August 18, 2007 By 26 Comments
I took the same table as I used for MySQL Group by Performance Tests to see how much MySQL can sort 1.000.000 rows, or rather return top 10 rows from sorted result set which is the most typical way sorting is used in practice. I tested full table scan of the table completes in 0.22 [...]
FaceBook Search, Search for social networks
August 12, 2007 By 4 Comments
Yesterday I ran into the article which sheds some light on FaceBook search implementation. As we’re recently a lot into search having implemented a bunch of search projects ourselves and helped number a of customers with their full text search needs I decided to post my thoughts on this matter. First I was surprised article [...]
Sphinx: Going Beyond full text search
July 23, 2007 By 18 Comments
I’ve already wrote a few times about various projects using Sphinx with MySQL for scalable Full Text Search applications. For example on BoardReader we’re using this combination to build search against over 1 billion of forum posts totaling over 1.5TB of data handling hundreds of thousands of search queries per day. The count of forum [...]
Predicting how long data load would take
May 24, 2007 By 14 Comments
I had this question asked many times during last week, and there is really no easy answer. There are just way too many variables to consider especially while loading large schemas with a lot of different table structures. So which variables affect the load speed: Table Structure This one is tricky. The shorter rows you [...]
