MySQL Index Cookbook

MySQL Index Cookbook
Deep & Wide Index Tutorial
Rick James
April, 2013

TOC
•Preface
•Case Study
•PRIMARY KEY
•Use Cases
•EXPLAIN
•Work-Arounds
•Datatypes
•Tools
•PARTITIONing
•MyISAM
•Miscellany

Engines covered
•InnoDB / XtraDB
•MyISAM
•PARTITIONing
•Not covered:
•NDB Cluster
•MEMORY
•FULLTEXT, Sphinx, GIS
•Except where noted, comments apply to both InnoDB/XtraDB and MyISAM

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Index ~= Table
•Each index is stored separately
•Index is very much like a table
•BTree structure
•InnoDB leaf: cols of PRIMARY KEY
•MyISAM leaf: row num or offset into data
("Leaf": a bottom node in a BTree)

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BTrees
•Efficient for keyed row lookup
•Efficient for “range” scan by key
•RoT ("Rule of Thumb): Fan-out of about 100 (1M rows = 3 levels)
•Best all-around index type
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/B-tree.svg/500px-B-tree.svg.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/B-tree.svg/500px-B-tree.svg.png

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Index Attributes
•Diff Engines have diff attributes
•Limited combinations (unlike other vendors) of
•clustering (InnoDB PK)
•unique
•method (Btree)

KEY vs INDEX vs …
•KEY == INDEX
•UNIQUE is an INDEX
•PRIMARY KEY is UNIQUE
•At most 1 per table
•InnoDB must have one
•Secondary Key = any key but PRIMARY KEY
•FOREIGN KEY implicitly creates a KEY

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“Clustering”
•Consecutive things are ‘adjacent’ on disk ☺ , therefore efficient in disk I/O
•“locality of reference” (etc)
•Index scans are clustered
•But note: For InnoDB PK you have to step over rest of data
•Table scan of InnoDB PK – clustered by PK (only)

“Table Scan”, “Index Scan”
•What – go through whole data/index
•Efficient because of way BTree works
•Slow for big tables
•When – if more than 10-30% otherwise
•Usually “good” if picked by optimizer
•EXPLAIN says “ALL”
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Range / BETWEEN
A "range" scan is a "table" scan, but for less than the whole table
•Flavors of “range” scan
•a BETWEEN 123 AND 456
•a > 123
•Sometimes: IN (…)
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Common Mistakes
•“I indexed every column” – usually not useful.
•User does not understand “compound indexes”
•INDEX(a), INDEX(a, b) – redundant
•PRIMARY KEY(id), INDEX(id) – redundant

Size RoT
•1K rows & fit in RAM: rarely performance problems
•1M rows: Need to improve datatypes & indexes
•1B rows: Pull out all stops! Add on Summary tables, SSDs, etc.

Case Study
Building up to a Compound Index

The question
Q: "When was Andrew Johnson president of the US?” Table `Presidents`: +-----+------------+-----------+-----------+ | seq | last | first | term | +-----+------------+-----------+-----------+ | 1 | Washington | George | 1789-1797 | | 2 | Adams | John | 1797-1801 | ... | 7 | Jackson | Andrew | 1829-1837 | ... | 17 | Johnson | Andrew | 1865-1869 | ... | 36 | Johnson | Lyndon B. | 1963-1969 | ...

The question – in SQL
SELECT term FROM Presidents WHERE last = 'Johnson' AND first = 'Andrew';
What INDEX(es) would be best for that question?

The INDEX choices
•No indexes
•INDEX(first), INDEX(last)
•Index Merge Intersect
•INDEX(last, first) – “compound”
•INDEX(last, first, term) – “covering”
•Variants

No Indexes
The interesting rows in EXPLAIN:
type: ALL <-- Implies table scan
key: NULL <-- Implies that no index is useful, hence table scan
rows: 44 <-- That's about how many rows in the table, so table scan
Not good.

INDEX(first), INDEX(last)
Two separate indexes
MySQL rarely uses more than one index
Optimizer will study each index, decide that 2 rows come from each, and pick one.
EXPLAIN:
key: last
key_len: 92 ← VARCHAR(30) utf8: 2+3*30
rows: 2 ← two “Johnson”

INDEX(first), INDEX(last) (cont.)
What’s it doing?
1.With INDEX(last), it finds the Johnsons
2.Get the PK from index (InnoDB): [17,36]
3.Reach into data (2 BTree probes)
4.Use “AND first=…” to filter
5.Deliver answer (1865-1869)

Index Merge Intersect
(“Index Merge” is rarely used)
1.INDEX(last) → [7,17]
2.INDEX(first) → [17, 36]
3.“AND” the lists → [17]
4.BTree into data for the row
5.Deliver answer
type: index_merge
possible_keys: first, last
key: first, last
key_len: 92,92
rows: 1
Extra: Using intersect(first,last); Using where

INDEX(last, first)
1.Index BTree to the one row: [17]
2.PK BTree for data
3.Deliver answer
key_len: 184 ← length of both fields
ref: const, const ← WHERE had constants
rows: 1 ← Goodie

INDEX(last, first, term)
1.Index BTree using last & first; get to leaf
2.Leaf has the answer – Finished!
key_len: 184 ← length of both fields
ref: const, const ← WHERE had constants
rows: 1 ← Goodie
Extra: Using where; Using index ← Note
“Covering” index – “Using index”

Variants
•Reorder ANDs in WHERE – no diff
•Reorder cols in INDEX – big diff
•Extra fields on end of index – mostly harmless
•Redundancy: INDEX(a) + INDEX(a,b) – DROP shorter
•“Prefix” INDEX(last(5)) – rarely helps; can hurt

Variants – examples
INDEX(last, first)
•WHERE last=... – good
•WHERE last=... AND first=… – good
•WHERE first=... AND last=… – good
•WHERE first=... – index useless
INDEX(last) (applied above):
good, so-so, so-so, useless

Cookbook
SELECT → the optimal compound INDEX to make.
1.all fields in WHERE that are “= const” (any order)
2.One more field (no skipping!):
1. WHERE Range (BETWEEN, >, …)
2. GROUP BY
3. ORDER BY

Cookbook – IN
IN ( SELECT ... ) – Very poor opt. (until 5.6)
IN ( 1,2,... ) – Works somewhat like “=“.

PRIMARY KEY
Gory details that you really should know

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PRIMARY KEY
•By definition: UNIQUE & NOT NULL
•InnoDB PK:
•Leaf contains the data row
•So... Lookup by PK goes straight to row
•So... Range scans by PK are efficient
•(PK needed for ACID)
•MyISAM PK:
•Identical structure to secondary index

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Secondary Indexes
•BTree
•Leaf item points to data row
•InnoDB: pointer is copy of PRIMARY KEY
•MyISAM: pointer is offset to row

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"Using Index"
When a SELECT references only the fields in a Secondary index, only the secondary index need be touched. This is a performance bonus.

What should be the PK?
Plan A: A “natural”, such as a unique name; possibly compound
Plan B: An artificial INT AUTO_INCREMENT
Plan C: No PK – generally not good
Plan D: UUID/GUID/MD5 – inefficient due to randomness

AUTO_INCREMENT?
id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY
•Better than no key – eg, for maintenance
•Useful when “natural key” is bulky and lots of secondary keys; else unnecessary
•Note: each InnoDB secondary key includes the PK columns. (Bulky PK → bulky secondary keys)

Size of InnoDB PK
Each InnoDB secondary key includes the PK columns.
•Bulky PK → bulky secondary keys
•"Using index" may kick in – because you have the PK fields implicitly in the Secondary key

No PK?
InnoDB must have a PK:
1.User-provided (best)
2.First UNIQUE NOT NULL key (sloppy)
3.Hidden, inaccessible 6-byte integer (you are better off with your own A_I)
"Trust me, have a PK."

Redundant Index
PRIMARY KEY (id),
INDEX (id, x),
UNIQUE (id, y)
Since the PK is “clustered” in InnoDB, the other two indexes are almost totally useless. Exception: If the index is “covering”.
INDEX (x, id) – a different case

Compound PK - Relationship
CREATE TABLE Relationship (
foo_id INT …,
bar_id INT …,
PRIMARY KEY (foo_id, bar_id),
INDEX (bar_id, foo_id) –- if going both directions
) ENGINE=InnoDB;

Use Cases
Derived from real life

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Normalizing (Mapping) table
Goal: Normalization – id ↔ value
id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
name VARCHAR(255),
PRIMARY KEY (id),
UNIQUE (name)
In MyISAM add these to “cover”: INDEX(id,name), INDEX(name,id)

Normalizing BIG
id MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
md5 BINARY(16/22/32) NOT NULL,
stuff TEXT/BLOB NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
UNIQUE (md5)
INSERT INTO tbl (md5, stuff) VALUES($m,$s)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE id=LAST_INDERT_ID(id);
$id = SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();
Caveat: Dups burn ids.

Avoid Burn
1.UPDATE ... JOIN ... WHERE id IS NULL -- Get the ids (old) – Avoids Burn
2.INSERT IGNORE ... SELECT DISTINCT ... -- New rows (if any)
3.UPDATE ... JOIN ... WHERE id IS NULL -- Get the ids (old or new) – multi-thread is ok.

WHERE lat … AND lng …
•Two fields being range tested
•Plan A: INDEX(lat), INDEX(lng) – let optimizer pick
•Plan B: Complex subqueries / UNIONs beyond scope
•Plan C: Akiban
•Plan D: Partition on Latitude; PK starts with Longitude: http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/latlng
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Index on MD5 / GUID
•VERY RANDOM! Therefore,
•Once the index is bigger than can fit in RAM cache, you will be thrashing on disk
•What to do??
•Normalize
•Some other key
•PARTITION by date may help INSERTs
•http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/uuid (type-1 only)

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Key-Value
•Flexible, expandable
•Clumsy, inefficient
•http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/eav
•Horror story about RDF...
•Indexes cannot make up for the clumsiness

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ORDER BY RAND()
•No built-in optimizations
•Will read all rows, sort by RAND(), deliver the LIMIT
•http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/random

Pagination
•ORDER BY … LIMIT 40,10 – Indexing won't be efficient
•→ Keep track of “left off”
•WHERE x > $leftoff ORDER BY … LIMIT 10
•LIMIT 11 – to know if there are more
•http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/pagination

Latest 10 Articles
•Potentially long list
•of articles, items, comments, etc;
•you want the "latest"
But
•JOIN getting in the way, and
•INDEXes are not working for you
Then build an helper table with a useful index:
http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/lists

LIMIT rows & get total count
•SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS … LIMIT 10
•SELECT FOUND_ROWS()
•If INDEX can be used, this is not “too” bad.
•Avoids a second SELECT
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ORDER BY x LIMIT 5
•Only if you get to the point of using x in the INDEX is the LIMIT going to be optimized.
•Otherwise it will
1.Collect all possible rows – costly
2.Sort by x – costly
3.Deliver first 5
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“It’s not using my index!”
SELECT … FROM tbl WHERE x=3;
INDEX (x)
•Case: few rows have x=3 – will use INDEX.
•Case: 10-30% match – might use INDEX
•Case: most rows match – will do table scan
The % depends on the phase of the moon

Getting ORDERed rows
Plan A: Gather the rows, filter via WHERE, deal with GROUP BY & DISTINCT, then sort (“filesort”).
Plan B: Use an INDEX to fetch the rows in the ‘correct’ order. (If GROUP BY is used, it must match the ORDER BY.)
The optimizer has trouble picking between them.

INDEX(a,b) vs (b,a)
INDEX (a, b) vs INDEX (b, a)
WHERE a=1 AND b=2 – both work equally well
WHERE a=1 AND b>2 – first is better
WHERE a>1 AND b>2 – each stops after 1st col
WHERE b=2 – 2nd only
WHERE b>2 – 2nd only

Compound “>”
•[assuming] INDEX(hr, min)
•WHERE (hr, min) >= (7,45) -- poorly optimized
•WHERE hr >= 7 AND min >= 45 – wrong
•WHERE (hr = 7 AND min >= 45) OR (hr > 7) – slow because of OR
•WHERE hr >= 7 AND (hr > 7 OR min >= 45) – better; [only needs INDEX(hr)]
•Use TIME instead of two fields! – even better
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UNION [ ALL | DISTINCT ]
•UNION defaults to UNION DISTINCT; maybe UNION ALL will do? (Avoids dedupping pass)
•Best practice: Explicitly state ALL or DISTINCT
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DISTINCT vs GROUP BY
•SELECT DISTINCT … GROUP BY → redundant
•To dedup the rows: SELECT DISTINCT
•To do aggregates: GSELECT GROUP BY
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OR --> UNION
•OR does not optimize well
•UNION may do better
SELECT ... WHERE a=1 OR b='x'
-->
SELECT ... WHERE a=1
UNION DISTINCT
SELECT ... WHERE b='x'
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EXPLAIN SELECT …
To see if your INDEX is useful
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/explain-output.html

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EXPLAIN
•Run EXPLAIN SELECT ... to find out how MySQL might perform the query today.
•Caveat: Actual query may pick diff plan
•Explain says which key it will use; SHOW CREATE TABLE shows the INDEXes
•If using compound key, look at byte len to deduce how many fields are used.
<#>

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EXPLAIN – “using index”
•EXPLAIN says “using index”
•Benefit: Don’t need to hit data ☺
•How to achieve: All fields used are in one index
•InnoDB: Remember that PK field(s) are in secondary indexes
•Tip: Sometimes useful to add fields to index:
•SELECT a,b FROM t WHERE c=1
•SELECT b FROM t WHERE c=1 ORDER BY a
•SELECT b FROM t WHERE c=1 GROUP BY a
•INDEX (c,a,b)

EXPLAIN EXTENDED
EXPLAIN EXTENDED SELECT …;
SHOW WARNINGS;
The first gives an extra column.
The second details how the optimizer reformulated the SELECT. LEFT JOIN→JOIN and other xforms.

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EXPLAIN – filesort
•Filesort: ☹ But it is just a symptom.
•A messy query will gather rows, write to temp, sort for group/order, deliver
•Gathering includes all needed columns
•Write to tmp:
•Maybe MEMORY, maybe MyISAM
•Maybe hits disk, maybe not -- can't tell easily

“filesort”
These might need filesort:
•DISTINCT
•GROUP BY
•ORDER BY
•UNION DISTINCT
Possible to need multiple filsorts (but no clue)
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“Using Temporary”
•if
•no BLOB, TEXT, VARCHAR > 512, FULLTEXT, etc (MEMORY doesn’t handle them)
•estimated data < max_heap_table_size
•others
•then “filesort” is done using the MEMORY engine (no disk)
•VARCHAR(n) becomes CHAR(n) for MEMORY
•utf8 takes 3n bytes
•else MyISAM is used

EXPLAIN PARTITIONS SELECT
Check whether the “partition pruning” actually pruned.
The “first” partition is always included when the partition key is DATE or DATETIME. This is to deal with invalid dates like 20120500.
Tip: Artificial, empty, “first” partition.

INDEX cost
•An INDEX is a BTree.
•Smaller than data (usually)
•New entry added during INSERT (always up to date)
•UPDATE of indexed col -- juggle index entry
•Benefit to SELECT far outweighs cost of INSERT (usually)

Work-Arounds
Inefficiencies, and what to do about them

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Add-an-Index-Cure (not)
•Normal learning curve:
•Stage 1: Learn to build table
•Stage 2: Learn to add index
•Stage 3: Indexes are a panacea, so go wild adding indexes
•Don’t go wild. Every index you add costs something in
•Disk space
•INSERT/UPDATE time

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OR → UNION
•INDEX(a), INDEX(b) != INDEX(a, b)
•Newer versions sometimes use two indexes
•WHERE a=1 OR b=2 =>
(SELECT ... WHERE a=1)
UNION
(SELECT ... WHERE b=2)

Subqueries – Inefficient
Generally, subqueries are less efficient than the equivalent JOIN.
Subquery with GROUP BY or LIMIT may be efficient
5.6 and MariaDB 5.5 do an excellent job of making most subqueries perform well
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Subquery Types
SELECT a, (SELECT …) AS b FROM …;
RoT: Turn into JOIN if no agg/limit
RoT: Leave as subq. if aggregation
SELECT … FROM ( SELECT … );
Handy for GROUP BY or LIMIT
SELECT … WHERE x IN ( SELECT … );
SELECT … FROM ( SELECT … ) a
JOIN ( SELECT … ) b ON …;
Usually very inefficient – do JOIN instead (Fixed in 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5)
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Subquery – example of utility
•You are SELECTing bulky stuff (eg TEXT/BLOB)
•WHERE clause could be entirely indexed, but is messy (JOIN, multiple ranges, ORs, etc)
•→ SELECT a.text, … FROM tbl a
JOIN ( SELECT id FROM tbl WHERE …) b
ON a.id = b.id;
•Why? Smaller “index scan” than “table scan”
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Extra filesort
•“ORDER BY NULL” – Eh? “I don’t care what order”
•GROUP BY may sort automatically
•ORDER BY NULL skips extra sort if GROUP BY did not sort
•Non-standardNo
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USE, FORCE ("hints")
•SELECT ... FROM foo USE INDEX(x)
•RoT: Rarely needed
•Sometimes ANALYZE TABLE fixes the ‘problem’ instead, by recalculating the “statistics”.
•RoT: Inconsistent cardinality → FORCE is a mistake.
•STRAIGHT_JOIN forces order of table usage (use sparingly)

Datatypes
little improvements that can be made

•VARCHAR (utf8: 3x, utf8mb4: 4x) → VARBINARY (1x)
•INT is 4 bytes → SMALLINT is 2 bytes, etc
•DATETIME → TIMESTAMP (8*:4)
•DATETIME → DATE (8*:3)
•Normalize (id instead of string)
•VARCHAR → ENUM (N:1)
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Field Sizes

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Smaller → Cacheable → Faster
•Fatter fields → fatter indexes → more disk space → poorer caching → more I/O → poorer performance
•INT is better than a VARCHAR for a url
•But this may mean adding a mapping table

WHERE fcn(col) = ‘const’
•No functions!
•WHERE <fcn>(<indexed col>) = …
•WHERE lcase(name) = ‘foo’
•Add extra column; index `name`
•Hehe – in this example lcase is unnecessary if using COLLATE *_ci !
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Date Range
•WHERE dt BETWEEN ‘2009-02-27’ AND ‘2009-03-02’ →
•“Midnight problem”
WHERE dt >= ‘2009-02-27’
AND dt < ‘2009-02-27’ + INTERVAL 4 DAY
•WHERE YEAR(dt) = ‘2009’ →
•Function precludes index usage
WHERE dt >= ‘2009-01-01’
AND dt < ‘2009-01-01’ + INTERVAL 1 YEAR

WHERE utf8 = latin1
•Mixed character set tests (or mixed collation tests) tend not to use INDEX
oDeclare VARCHAR fields consistently
DD
•WHERE foo = _utf8 'abcd'
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Don’t index sex
•gender CHAR(1) CHARSET ascii
•INDEX(gender)
•Don’t bother!
•WHERE gender = ‘F’ – if it occurs > 10%, index will not be used

Prefix Index
•INDEX(a(10)) – Prefixing usually bad
•May fail to use index when it should
•May not use subsequent fields
•Must check data anyway
•Etc.
•UNIQUE(a(10)) constrains the first 10 chars to be unique – probably not what you wanted!
•May be useful for TEXT/BLOB
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VARCHAR – VARBINARY
•Collation takes some effort
•UTF8 may need 3x the space (utf8mb4: 4x)
•CHAR, TEXT – collated (case folding, etc)
•BINARY, BLOB – simply compare the bytes
•Hence… MD5s, postal codes, IP addresses, etc, should be BINARY or VARBINARY
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IP Address
•VARBINARY(39)
•Avoids unnecessary collation
•Big enough for Ipv6
•BINARY(16)
•Smaller
•Sortable, Range-scannable
•http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/ipranges
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Tools
•slow log
•show create table
•status variables
•percona toolkit or others.
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SlowLog
•Turn it on
•long_query_time = 2 -- seconds
•pt-query-digest -- to find worst queries
•EXPLAIN – to see what it is doing

Handler_read%
A tool for seeing what is happening…
FLUSH STATUS;
SELECT …;
SHOW STATUS LIKE ‘Handler_read%’;

PARTITIONing
Index gotchas, etc.

PARTITION Keys
•Either:
•No UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY, or
•All Partition-by fields must be in all UNIQUE/PRIMARY KEYs
•(Even if artificially added to AI)
•RoT: Partition fields should not be first in keys
•Sorta like getting two-dimensional index - - first is partition 'pruning', then PK.
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PARTITION Use Cases
•Possible use cases
•Time series
•DROP PARTITION much better than DELETE
•“two” clustered indexes
•random index and most of effort spent in last partition
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PARTITION RoTs
Rules of Thumb
•Reconsider PARTITION – often no benefit
•Don't partition if under 1M rows
•BY RANGE only
•No SUBPARTITIONs
http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/ricksrots#partitioning

PARTITION Pruning
•Uses WHERE to pick some partition(s)
•Sort of like having an extra dimension
•Don't need to pick partition (cannot until 5.6)
•Each "partition" is like a table
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MyISAM
The big differences between MyISAM and InnoDB

MyISAM vs InnoDB Keys
InnoDB PK is “clustered” with the data
•PK lookup finds row
•Secondary indexes use PK to find data
MyISAM PK is just like secondary indexes
•All indexes (in .MYI) point to data (in .MYD) via row number or byte offset
http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/myisam2innodb

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Caching
•MyISAM: 1KB BTree index blocks are cached in “key buffer”
•key_buffer_size
•Recently lifted 4GB limit
•InnoDB: 16KB BTree index and data blocks are cached in buffer pool
•innodb_buffer_pool_size
•The 16K is settable (rare cases)
•MyISAM has “delayed key write” – probably rarely useful, especially with RAID & BBWC

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4G in MyISAM
•The “pointer” in MyISAM indexes is fixed at N bytes.
•Old versions defaulted to 4 bytes (4G)
•5.1 default: 6 bytes (256T)
•Fixed/Dynamic
•Fixed length rows (no varchar, etc): Pointer is row number
•Dynamic: Pointer is byte offset
•Override/Fix: CREATE/ALTER TABLE ... MAX_ROWS = ...
•Alter is slow

Miscellany
you can’t index a kitchen sink

Impact on INSERT / DELETE
•Write operations need to update indexes – sooner or later
•Performance
•INSERT at end = hot spot there
•Random key = disk thrashing
•Minimize number of indexes, especially random
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WHERE name LIKE ‘Rick%’
•WHERE name LIKE ‘Rick%’
•INDEX (name) – “range”
•WHERE name LIKE ‘%James’
•won’t use index
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WHERE a=1 GROUP BY b
• WHERE a=1 GROUP BY b
WHERE a=1 ORDER BY b
WHERE a=1 GROUP BY b ORDER BY b
•INDEX(a, b) – nice for those
•WHERE a=1 GROUP BY b ORDER BY c
•INDEX(a, b, c) – no better than (a,b)
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WHERE a > 9 ORDER BY a
•WHERE a > 9 ORDER BY a
•INDEX (a) – will catch both the WHERE and the ORDER BY ☺
•WHERE b=1 AND a > 9 ORDER BY a
•INDEX (b, a)
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GROUP BY, ORDER BY
•if there is a compound key such that
•WHERE is satisfied, and
•there are more fields in the key,
•then, MySQL will attempt to use more fields in the index for GROUP BY and/or ORDER BY
•GROUP BY aa ORDER BY bb → extra “filesort”

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ORDER BY, LIMIT
•If you get all the way through the ORDER BY, still using the index, and you have LIMIT, then the LIMIT is done efficiently.
•If not, it has to gather all the data, sort it, finally deliver what LIMIT says.
•This is the “Classic Meltdown Query”.

GROUP+ORDER+LIMIT
•Efficient:
•WHERE a=1 GROUP BY b INDEX(a,b)
•WHERE a=1 ORDER BY b LIMIT 9 INDEX(a,b)
•GROUP BY b ORDER BY c INDEX(b,c)
•Inefficient:
•WHERE x.a=1 AND y.c=2 GROUP/ORDER/LIMIT
•(because of 2 tables)
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Index Types (BTree, etc)
•BTree
•most used, most general
•Hash
•MEMORY Engine only
•useless for range scan
•Fulltext
•Pretty good for “word” searches in text
•GIS (Spatial) (2D)
•No bit, etc.

FULLTEXT index
•“Words”
•Stoplist excludes common English words
•Min length defaults to 4
•Natural
•IN BOOLEAN MODE
•Trumps other INDEXes
•Serious competitors: Lucene, Sphinx
•MyISAM only until 5.6.4
oMultiple diffs in InnoDB FT
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AUTO_INCREMENT index
•AI field must be first in some index
•Need not be UNIQUE or PRIMARY
•Can be compound (esp. for PARTITION)
•Could explicitly add dup id (unless ...)
•(MyISAM has special case for 2nd field)

RoTs
Rules of Thumb
•100 I/Os / sec (500/sec for SSD)
•RAID striping (1,5,6,10) – divide time by striping factor
•RAID write cache – writes are “instantaneous” but not sustainable in the long haul
•Cached fetch is 10x faster than uncached
•Query Cache is useless (in heavy writes)

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Low cardinality, Not equal
•WHERE deleted = 0
•WHERE archived != 1
•These are likely to be poorly performing queries. Characteristics:
•Poor cardinality
•Boolean
•!=
•Workarounds
•Move deleted/hidden/etc rows into another table
•Juggle compound index order (rarely works)
•"Cardinality", by itself, is rarely of note

Not NOT
•Rarely uses INDEX:
•NOT LIKE
•NOT IN
•NOT (expression)
•<>
•NOT EXISTS ( SELECT * … ) – essentially a LEFT JOIN; often efficient
Yahoo! Confidential

Replication
•SBR
•Replays query
•Slave could be using different Engine and/or Indexes
•RBR
•PK important

Index Limits
•Index width – 767B per column
•Index width – 3072B total
•Number of indexes – more than you should have
•Disk size – terabytes

Location
•InnoDB, file_per_table – .ibd file
•InnoDB, old – ibdata1
•MyISAM – .MYI
•PARTITION – each partition looks like a separate table

ALTER TABLE
1.copy data to tmp
2.rebuild indexes (on the fly, or separately)
3.RENAME into place
Even ALTERs that should not require the copy do so. (few exceptions)
RoT: Do all changes in a single ALTER. (some PARTITION exceptions)
5.6 fixes most of this

Tunables
•InnoDB indexes share caching with data in innodb_buffer_pool_size – recommend 70% of available RAM
•MyISAM indexes, not data, live in key_buffer_size – recommend 20% of available RAM
•log_queries_not_using_indexes – don’t bother

Yahoo! Confidential
Closing
•More Questions?
•http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?24

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