MySQL Stored Procedure Programming

SQL Tuning Statements and Practices

MySQL provides several statements and utilities that assist with tuning SQL, and you need to be familiar with these resources. The statements and utilities are described in the following sections.

EXPLAIN Statement

The most important SQL tuning statement in the MySQL language is EXPLAIN. EXPLAIN exposes the execution plan that the optimizer will use to resolve a particular SQL statement. Without EXPLAIN, you are doomed to trial-and-error tuning.

EXPLAIN has a simple syntax:

    EXPLAIN sql_text;

EXPLAIN returns a result set consisting of at least one row for each table referenced in the SQL. Additional rows might be returned to indicate how subqueries or derived tables are used in the query. Example 19-3 is a simple demonstration of an explain plan for a two-table join (we used the \G option to print the output with each column on a separate line).

Example 19-3. Example of EXPLAIN output

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT customer_name
    ->   FROM employees join customers
    ->        ON(customers.sales_rep_id=employees.employee_id)
    ->  WHERE employees.surname='GRIGSBY'
    ->    AND employees.firstname='RAY' \G

*************************** 1. row ***************************
           id: 1
  select_type: SIMPLE
        table: employees1
         type: ref
possible_keys: PRIMARY,i_employees_name3
          key: i_employees_name4
      key_len: 80
          ref: const,const
         rows: 15
        Extra: Using where; Using index6
*************************** 2. row ***************************
           id: 1
  select_type: SIMPLE
        table: customers2 type: ref possible_keys: ...