Cross join in SQLite vs other dbs - mysql

Question

I was playing around with SQLite and I ran into an odd performance issue with CROSS JOINS on very small data sets. For example, any cross join I do in SQLite takes about 3x or longer than the same cross join in mysql. For example, here would be an example for 3,000 rows in mysql:
select COUNT(*) from (
select * from main_s limit 3000
) x cross join (
select * from main_s limit 3000
) x2 group by x.territory
Does SQLite use a different algorithm or something than does other client-server databases for doing cross joins or other types of joins? I have had a lot of luck using SQLite on a single table/database, but whenever joining tables, it seems be become a bit more problematic.

Answer 1

Does SQLite use a different algorithm or something than does other client-server databases for doing cross joins or other types of joins?
Yes. The algorithm used by SQLite is very simple. In SQLite, joins are executed as nested loop joins. The database goes through one table, and for each row, searches matching rows from the other table.
SQLite is unable to figure out how to use an index to speed the join and without indices, an k-way join takes time proportional to N^k. MySQL for example, creates some "ghostly" indexes which helps the iteration process to be faster.

Answer 2

It has been commented already by Shawn that this question would need much more details in order to get a really accurate answer.
However, as a general answer, please be aware that this note in the SQLite documentation states that the algorithm used to perform CROSS JOINs may be suboptimal (by design!), and that their usage is generally discouraged:
Side note: Special handling of CROSS JOIN. There is no difference between the "INNER JOIN", "JOIN" and "," join operators. They are completely interchangeable in SQLite. The "CROSS JOIN" join operator produces the same result as the "INNER JOIN", "JOIN" and "," operators, but is handled differently by the query optimizer in that it prevents the query optimizer from reordering the tables in the join. An application programmer can use the CROSS JOIN operator to directly influence the algorithm that is chosen to implement the SELECT statement. Avoid using CROSS JOIN except in specific situations where manual control of the query optimizer is desired. Avoid using CROSS JOIN early in the development of an application as doing so is a premature optimization. The special handling of CROSS JOIN is an SQLite-specific feature and is not a part of standard SQL.
This clearly indicates that the SQLite query planner handles CROSS JOINs differently than other RDBMS.
Note: nevertheless, I am unsure that this really applies to your use case, where both derived tables being joined have the same number of records.

Answer 3

Why MySQL might be faster: It uses the optimization that it calls "Using join buffer (Block Nested Loop)".
But... There are many things that are "wrong" with the query. I would hate for you to draw a conclusion on comparing DB engines based on your findings.
It could be that one DB will create an index to help with join, even if none were already there.
SELECT * probably hauls around all the columns, unless the Optimizer is smart enough to toss all the columns except for territory.
A LIMIT without an ORDER BY gives you random value. You might think that the resultset is necessarily 3000 rows of the value "3000" in each, but it is perfectly valid to come up with other results. (Depending on what you ORDER BY, it still may not be deterministic.)
Having a COUNT(*) without a column saying what it is counting (territory) seems unrealistic.
You have the same subquery twice. Some engine may be smart enough to evaluate it only once. Or you could reformulate it with WITH to (possibly) give the Optimizer a big hint of such. (I think the example below shows how it would be reformulated in MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.2; I don't know about SQLite).
If you are pitting one DB against the other, please use multiple queries that relate to your application.
This is not necessarily a "small" dataset, since the intermediate table (unless optimized away) has 9,000,000 rows.
I doubt if I have written more than one cross join in a hundred queries, maybe a thousand. Its performance is hardly worth worrying about.
WITH w AS ( SELECT territory FROM main_s LIMIT 3000 )
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM w AS x1
JOIN w AS x2
GROUP BY x1.territory;

Answer 4

As noted above, using CROSS JOIN in SQLite restricts the optimiser from reordering tables so that you can influence the order the nested loops that perform the join will take.
However, that's a red herring here as you are limiting rows in both sub selects to 3000 rows, and its the same table, so there is no optimisation to be had there anyway.
Lets see what your query actually does:
select COUNT(*) from (
select * from main_s limit 3000
) x cross join (
select * from main_s limit 3000
) x2 group by x.territory
You say; produce an intermediate result set of 9 million rows (3000 x 3000), group them on x.territory and return count of the size of the group.
So let's say the row size of your table is 100 bytes.
You say, for each of 3000 rows of 100 bytes, give me 3000 rows of 100 bytes.
Hence you get 9 million rows of 200 bytes length, an intermediate result set of 1.8GB.
So here are some optimisations you could make.
select COUNT(*) from (
select territory from main_s limit 3000
) x cross join (
select * from main_s limit 3000
) x2 group by x.territory
You don't use anything other than territory from x, so select just that. Lets assume it is 8 bytes, so now you create an intermediate result set of:
9M x 108 = 972MB
So we nearly halve the amount of data. Lets try the same for x2.
But wait, you are not using any data fields from x2. You are just using it multiply the result set by 3000. If we do this directly we get:
select COUNT(*) * 3000 from (
select territory from main_s limit 3000
) group by territory
The intermediate result set is now:
3000 x 8 = 24KB which is now 0.001% of the original.
Further, now that SELECT * is not being used, it's possible the optimiser will be able to use an index on main_s that includes territory as a covering index (meaning it doesn't need to lookup the row to get territory).
This is done when there is a WHERE clause, it will try to chose a covering index that will also satisfy the query without using row lookups, but it's not explicit in the documentation if this is also done when WHERE is not used.
If you determined a covering index was not being use (assuming one exists), then counterintuitively (because sorting takes time), you could use ORDER BY territory in the sub select to cause the covering index to be used.
select COUNT(*) * 3000 from (
select territory from main_s limit 3000 order by territory
) group by territory
Check the optimiser documentation here:
https://www.sqlite.org/draft/optoverview.html
To summarise:
The optimiser uses the structure of your query to look for hints and clues about how the query may be optimised to run quicker.
These clues take the form of keywords such as WHERE clauses, ORDER By, JOIN (ON), etc.
Your query as written provides none of these clues.
If I understand your question correctly, you are interested in why other SQL systems are able to optimise your query as written.
The most likely reasons seem to be:
Ability to eliminate unused columns from sub selects (likely)
Ability to use covering indexes without WHERE or ORDER BY (likely)
Ability to eliminate unused sub selects (unlikely)
But this is a theory that would need testing.

Answer 5

Sqlite uses CROSS JOIN as a flag to the query-planner to disable optimizations. The docs are quite clear:
Programmers can force SQLite to use a particular loop nesting order for a join by using the CROSS JOIN operator instead of just JOIN, INNER JOIN, NATURAL JOIN, or a "," join. Though CROSS JOINs are commutative in theory, SQLite chooses to never reorder the tables in a CROSS JOIN. Hence, the left table of a CROSS JOIN will always be in an outer loop relative to the right table.
https://www.sqlite.org/optoverview.html#crossjoin