How to optimise this MySQL query? Millions of Rows - mysql

Question

I have the following query:
SELECT
analytics.source AS referrer,
COUNT(analytics.id) AS frequency,
SUM(IF(transactions.status = 'COMPLETED', 1, 0)) AS sales
FROM analytics
LEFT JOIN transactions ON analytics.id = transactions.analytics
WHERE analytics.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY analytics.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10
The analytics table has 60M rows and the transactions table has 3M rows.
When I run an EXPLAIN on this query, I get:
+------+--------------+-----------------+--------+---------------------+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------------+----------+-----------+-------------------------------------------------+
| # id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | |
+------+--------------+-----------------+--------+---------------------+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------------+----------+-----------+-------------------------------------------------+
| '1' | 'SIMPLE' | 'analytics' | 'ref' | 'analytics_user_id | analytics_source' | 'analytics_user_id' | '5' | 'const' | '337662' | 'Using where; Using temporary; Using filesort' |
| '1' | 'SIMPLE' | 'transactions' | 'ref' | 'tran_analytics' | 'tran_analytics' | '5' | 'dijishop2.analytics.id' | '1' | NULL | |
+------+--------------+-----------------+--------+---------------------+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------------+----------+-----------+-------------------------------------------------+
I can't figure out how to optimise this query as it's already very basic. It takes around 70 seconds to run this query.
Here are the indexes that exist:
+-------------+-------------+----------------------------+---------------+------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------+--------+-------------+----------+----------------+
| # Table | Non_unique | Key_name | Seq_in_index | Column_name | Collation | Cardinality | Sub_part | Packed | Null | Index_type | Comment | Index_comment |
+-------------+-------------+----------------------------+---------------+------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------+--------+-------------+----------+----------------+
| 'analytics' | '0' | 'PRIMARY' | '1' | 'id' | 'A' | '56934235' | NULL | NULL | '' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_user_id' | '1' | 'user_id' | 'A' | '130583' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_product_id' | '1' | 'product_id' | 'A' | '490812' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_affil_user_id' | '1' | 'affil_user_id' | 'A' | '55222' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_source' | '1' | 'source' | 'A' | '24604' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_country_name' | '1' | 'country_name' | 'A' | '39510' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_gordon' | '1' | 'id' | 'A' | '56934235' | NULL | NULL | '' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_gordon' | '2' | 'user_id' | 'A' | '56934235' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'analytics' | '1' | 'analytics_gordon' | '3' | 'source' | 'A' | '56934235' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
+-------------+-------------+----------------------------+---------------+------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------+--------+-------------+----------+----------------+
+----------------+-------------+-------------------+---------------+-------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------+--------+-------------+----------+----------------+
| # Table | Non_unique | Key_name | Seq_in_index | Column_name | Collation | Cardinality | Sub_part | Packed | Null | Index_type | Comment | Index_comment |
+----------------+-------------+-------------------+---------------+-------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------+--------+-------------+----------+----------------+
| 'transactions' | '0' | 'PRIMARY' | '1' | 'id' | 'A' | '2436151' | NULL | NULL | '' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'transactions' | '1' | 'tran_user_id' | '1' | 'user_id' | 'A' | '56654' | NULL | NULL | '' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'transactions' | '1' | 'transaction_id' | '1' | 'transaction_id' | 'A' | '2436151' | '191' | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'transactions' | '1' | 'tran_analytics' | '1' | 'analytics' | 'A' | '2436151' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'transactions' | '1' | 'tran_status' | '1' | 'status' | 'A' | '22' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'transactions' | '1' | 'gordon_trans' | '1' | 'status' | 'A' | '22' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
| 'transactions' | '1' | 'gordon_trans' | '2' | 'analytics' | 'A' | '2436151' | NULL | NULL | 'YES' | 'BTREE' | '' | '' |
+----------------+-------------+-------------------+---------------+-------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------+--------+-------------+----------+----------------+
Simplified schema for the two tables before adding any extra indexes as suggested as it didn't improve the situation.
CREATE TABLE `analytics` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`user_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`affil_user_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`product_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`medium` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`source` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`terms` varchar(1024) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`is_browser` tinyint(1) DEFAULT NULL,
`is_mobile` tinyint(1) DEFAULT NULL,
`is_robot` tinyint(1) DEFAULT NULL,
`browser` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`mobile` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`robot` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`platform` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`referrer` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`domain` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`ip` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`continent_code` varchar(10) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`country_name` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`city` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `analytics_user_id` (`user_id`),
KEY `analytics_product_id` (`product_id`),
KEY `analytics_affil_user_id` (`affil_user_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=64821325 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE TABLE `transactions` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`transaction_id` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`user_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`pay_key` varchar(50) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`sender_email` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`amount` decimal(10,2) DEFAULT NULL,
`currency` varchar(10) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`status` varchar(50) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`analytics` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`ip_address` varchar(46) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`session_id` varchar(60) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`eu_vat_applied` int(1) DEFAULT '0',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `tran_user_id` (`user_id`),
KEY `transaction_id` (`transaction_id`(191)),
KEY `tran_analytics` (`analytics`),
KEY `tran_status` (`status`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=10019356 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
If the above can not be optimised any further. Any implementation advice on summary tables will be great. We are using a LAMP stack on AWS. The above query is running on RDS (m1.large).

Answer 1

I would create the following indexes (b-tree indexes):
analytics(user_id, source, id)
transactions(analytics, status)
This is different from Gordon's suggestion.
The order of columns in the index is important.
You filter by specific analytics.user_id, so this field has to be the first in the index.
Then you group by analytics.source. To avoid sorting by source this should be the next field of the index. You also reference analytics.id, so it is better to have this field as part of the index, put it last. Is MySQL capable of reading just the index and not touching the table? I don't know, but it is rather easy to test.
Index on transactions has to start with analytics, because it would be used in the JOIN. We also need status.
SELECT
analytics.source AS referrer,
COUNT(analytics.id) AS frequency,
SUM(IF(transactions.status = 'COMPLETED', 1, 0)) AS sales
FROM analytics
LEFT JOIN transactions ON analytics.id = transactions.analytics
WHERE analytics.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY analytics.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10

Answer 2

First some analysis...
SELECT a.source AS referrer,
COUNT(*) AS frequency, -- See question below
SUM(t.status = 'COMPLETED') AS sales
FROM analytics AS a
LEFT JOIN transactions AS t ON a.id = t.analytics AS a
WHERE a.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY a.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10
If the mapping from a to t is "one-to-many", then you need to consider whether the COUNT and SUM have the correct values or inflated values. As the query stands, they are "inflated". The JOIN occurs before the aggregation, so you are counting the number of transactions and how many were completed. I'll assume that is desired.
Note: The usual pattern is COUNT(*); saying COUNT(x) implies checking x for being NULL. I suspect that check is not needed?
This index handles the WHERE and is "covering":
analytics: INDEX(user_id, source, id) -- user_id first
transactions: INDEX(analytics, status) -- in this order
The GROUP BY may or may not require a 'sort'. The ORDER BY, being different than the GROUP BY, definitely will need a sort. And the entire grouped set of rows will need to be sorted; there is no shortcut for the LIMIT.
Normally, Summary tables are date-oriented. That is, the PRIMARY KEY includes a 'date' and some other dimensions. Perhaps, keying by date and user_id would make sense? How many transactions per day does the average user have? If at least 10, then let's consider a Summary table. Also, it is important not to be UPDATEing or DELETEing old records. More
I would probably have
user_id ...,
source ...,
dy DATE ...,
status ...,
freq MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
status_ct MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY(user_id, status, source, dy)
Then the query becomes
SELECT source AS referrer,
SUM(freq) AS frequency,
SUM(status_ct) AS completed_sales
FROM Summary
WHERE user_id = 52094
AND status = 'COMPLETED'
GROUP BY source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10
The speed comes from many factors
Smaller table (fewer rows to look at)
No JOIN
More useful index
(It still needs the extra sort.)
Even without the summary table, there may be some speedups...
How big are the tables? How big is `innodb_buffer_pool_size?
Normalizing some of the strings that are both bulky and repetitive could make that table not I/O-bound.
This is awful: KEY (transaction_id(191)); See here for 5 ways to fix it.
IP addresses do not need 255 bytes, nor utf8mb4_unicode_ci. (39) and ascii are sufficient.

Answer 3

For this query:
SELECT a.source AS referrer,
COUNT(*) AS frequency,
SUM( t.status = 'COMPLETED' ) AS sales
FROM analytics a LEFT JOIN
transactions t
ON a.id = t.analytics
WHERE a.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY a.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10 ;
You want an index on analytics(user_id, id, source) and transactions(analytics, status).

Answer 4

Try below and let me know if this helps.
SELECT
analytics.source AS referrer,
COUNT(analytics.id) AS frequency,
SUM(IF(transactions.status = 'COMPLETED', 1, 0)) AS sales
FROM (SELECT * FROM analytics where user_id = 52094) analytics
LEFT JOIN (SELECT analytics, status from transactions where analytics = 52094) transactions ON analytics.id = transactions.analytics
GROUP BY analytics.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10

Answer 5

Could you try below Approach:
SELECT
analytics.source AS referrer,
COUNT(analytics.id) AS frequency,
SUM(sales) AS sales
FROM analytics
LEFT JOIN(
SELECT transactions.Analytics, (CASE WHEN transactions.status = 'COMPLETED' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS sales
FROM analytics INNER JOIN transactions ON analytics.id = transactions.analytics
) Tra
ON analytics.id = Tra.analytics
WHERE analytics.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY analytics.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10

Answer 6

This query potentially joins millions of analytics records with transactions records and calculates the sum (including the status check) on millions of records.
If we could first apply the LIMIT 10 and then do the join and calculate the sum, we could speed up the query.
Unfortunately, we need the analytics.id for the join, which gets lost after applying the GROUP BY. But maybe analytics.source is selective enough to boost the query anyway.
My Idea is therefore to calculate the frequencies, limit by them, to return the analytics.source and frequency in a subquery and to use this result to filter the analytics in the main query, which then does the rest of the joins and calculations on a hopefully much reduced number of records.
Minimal subquery (note: no join, no sum, returns 10 records):
SELECT
source,
COUNT(id) AS frequency
FROM analytics
WHERE user_id = 52094
GROUP BY source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10
The full query using the above query as subquery x:
SELECT
x.source AS referrer,
x.frequency,
SUM(IF(t.status = 'COMPLETED', 1, 0)) AS sales
FROM
(<subquery here>) x
INNER JOIN analytics a
ON x.source = a.source -- This reduces the number of records
LEFT JOIN transactions t
ON a.id = t.analytics
WHERE a.user_id = 52094 -- We could have several users per source
GROUP BY x.source, x.frequency
ORDER BY x.frequency DESC
If this does not yield the expected performance boost, this could be due to MySQL applying the joins in an unexpected order. As explained here "Is there a way to force MySQL execution order?", you could replace the join by STRAIGHT_JOIN in this case.

Answer 7

Only Problem I find in your query is
GROUP BY analytics.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
because of this query is doing filesort using temporary table.
One way to avoid this is by creating another table like
CREATE TABLE `analytics_aggr` (
`source` varchar(45) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`frequency` int(10) DEFAULT NULL,
`sales` int(10) DEFAULT NULL,
KEY `sales` (`sales`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci;`
insert data into analytics_aggr using below query
insert into analytics_aggr SELECT
analytics.source AS referrer,
COUNT(analytics.id) AS frequency,
SUM(IF(transactions.status = 'COMPLETED', 1, 0)) AS sales
FROM analytics
LEFT JOIN transactions ON analytics.id = transactions.analytics
WHERE analytics.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY analytics.source
ORDER BY null
Now you can easily get you data using
select * from analytics_aggr order by sales desc

Answer 8

Try this
SELECT
a.source AS referrer,
COUNT(a.id) AS frequency,
SUM(t.sales) AS sales
FROM (Select id, source From analytics Where user_id = 52094) a
LEFT JOIN (Select analytics, case when status = 'COMPLETED' Then 1 else 0 end as sales
From transactions) t ON a.id = t.analytics
GROUP BY a.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10
I'm proposing this because you said "they are massive table" but this sql using very few columns only. In this case if we use inline view with require columns only then it will be good
Note: memory also will play important role here. So confirm the memory before decide the inline view

Answer 9

I would try to separate querying from the two tables. Since you need only top 10 sources, I would get them first and then query from transactions the sales column:
SELECT source as referrer
,frequency
,(select count(*)
from transactions t
where t.analytics in (select distinct id
from analytics
where user_id = 52094
and source = by_frequency.source)
and status = 'completed'
) as sales
from (SELECT analytics.source
,count(*) as frequency
from analytics
where analytics.user_id = 52094
group by analytics.source
order by frequency desc
limit 10
) by_frequency
It may be also faster without the distinct

Answer 10

I would try subquery:
SELECT a.source AS referrer,
COUNT(*) AS frequency,
SUM((SELECT COUNT(*) FROM transactions t
WHERE a.id = t.analytics AND t.status = 'COMPLETED')) AS sales
FROM analytics a
WHERE a.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY a.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10;
Plus indexes exactly as #Gordon's answer: analytics(user_id, id, source) and transactions(analytics, status).

Answer 11

I am assuming the predicate, user_id = 52094, is for illustration purpose and in application, the selected user_id is a variable.
I also assume that ACID property is not very important here.
(1) Therefore, I will maintain two replica tables with only the necessary fields (it is similar to the indices Vladimir had suggested above) using a utility table.
CREATE TABLE mv_anal (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`user_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`source` varchar(45),
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);
CREATE TABLE mv_trans (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`status` varchar(50) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`analytics` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
);
CREATE TABLE util (
last_updated_anal int (11) NOT NULL,
last_updated_trans int (11) NOT NULL
);
INSERT INTO util (0, 0);
The gain here is that we will be reading a relatively smaller projections of the original tables -- hopefully, OS level and DB level caches work and they aren't read from slower secondary storage but from faster RAM. This can be a very great gain.
Here is how I updated the two tables (the below is a transaction run by a cron) :
-- TRANSACTION STARTS --
INSERT INTO mv_trans
SELECT id, IF (status = 'COMPLETE', 1, 0) AS status, analysis
FROM transactions JOIN util
ON util.last_updated_trans <= transactions.id
UPDATE util
SET last_updated_trans = sub.m
FROM (SELECT MAX (id) AS m FROM mv_trans) sub;
-- TRANSACTION COMMITS --
-- similar transaction for mv_anal.
(2) Now, I will tackle the selectivity to reduce sequential scan time. I will have to build a b-tree index on user_id, source and id (in this sequence) on mv_anal.
Note: the above can be achieved by just creating index on analytics table but building such an index requires reading big table with 60M rows. My method requires the index building to read only very thin table. Thus, we can rebuild the btree more frequently (to counter the skew problem as the table is append-only).
This is how I make sure the high selectivity is achieved when querying and to counter skewing btree problem.
(3) In PostgreSQL, WITH subqueries are always materialized. I hope similarly for MySQL. Therefore, as the last mile of optimization:
WITH sub_anal AS (
SELECT user_id, source AS referrer, COUNT (id) AS frequency
FROM mv_anal
WHERE user_id = 52094
GROUP BY user_id, source
ORDER BY COUNT (id) DESC
LIMIT 10
)
SELECT sa.referrer, sa.frequency, SUM (status) AS sales
FROM sub_anal AS sa
JOIN mv_anal anal
ON sa.referrer = anal.source AND sa.user_id = anal.user_id
JOIN mv_trans AS trans
ON anal.id = trans.analytics

Answer 12

Late to the party. I think you'll need to load one index into MySQL's cache. The NLJ is probably killing performance. Here's how I see it:
The Path
Your query is simple. It has two tables and the "path" is very clear:
The optimizer should plan on reading the analytics table first.
The optimizer should plan on reading the transactions table second. This is because you are using a LEFT OUTER JOIN. No much discussion on this one.
Besides, the analytics table is 60 million rows and the best path should filter rows as soon as possible on this one.
The Access
Once the path is clear, you need to decide if you want to use an Index Access or a Table Access. Both have pros and cons. However, you want to improve the SELECT performance:
You should choose Index Access.
Avoid hybrid access. Therefore, you should avoid any Table Access (fetches) at all cost. Translation: place all the participating columns in indexes.
The Filtering
Again, you want high performance for the SELECT. Therefore:
You should perform the filtering at the index level, not at the table level.
Row Aggregation
After filtering, the next step is to aggregate rows by GROUP BY analytics.source. This can be improved by placing the source column as the first column in the index.
Optimal Indexes for Path, Access, Filtering, and Aggregation
Considering all the above, you should include all mentioned columns into indexes. The following indexes should improve the response time:
create index ix1_analytics on analytics (user_id, source, id);
create index ix2_transactions on transactions (analytics, status);
These indexes fulfill the "path", the "access", and the "filtering" strategies decribed above.
The Index Cache
Finally -- and this is critical -- load the secondary index into MySQL's memory cache. MySQL is performing a NLJ (Nested Loop Join) -- a 'ref' in MySQL lingo -- and needs to access the second one randomly nearly 200k times.
Unfortunately, I don't know for sure how to load the index into MySQL's cache. The use of FORCE may work, as in:
SELECT
analytics.source AS referrer,
COUNT(analytics.id) AS frequency,
SUM(IF(transactions.status = 'COMPLETED', 1, 0)) AS sales
FROM analytics
LEFT JOIN transactions FORCE index (ix2_transactions)
ON analytics.id = transactions.analytics
WHERE analytics.user_id = 52094
GROUP BY analytics.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10
Make sure you have enough cache space. Here's a short question/answer to figure out: How to figure out if mysql index fits entirely in memory
Good luck! Oh, and post the results.

Answer 13

This question has definitely received a lot of attention so I'm sure all obvious solutions have been tried. I did not see something that addresses the LEFT JOIN in the query, though.
I have noticed that LEFT JOIN statements usually force query planners into hash join which are fast for a small number of results, but terribly slow for a large number of results. As noted in #Rick James' answer, since the join in the original query is on the identity field analytics.id, this will generate large number of results. A hash join will yield terrible performance results. The suggestion below addresses this below without any schema or processing changes.
Since the aggregation is by analytics.source, I would try a query that creates separate aggregations for frequency by source and sales by source and defers the left join until after aggregation is complete. This should allow the indexes to be used best (typically this is a merge join for large data sets).
Here is my suggestion:
SELECT t1.source AS referrer, t1.frequency, t2.sales
FROM (
-- Frequency by source
SELECT a.source, COUNT(a.id) AS frequency
FROM analytics a
WHERE a.user_id=52094
GROUP BY a.source
) t1
LEFT JOIN (
-- Sales by source
SELECT a.source,
SUM(IF(t.status = 'COMPLETED', 1, 0)) AS sales
FROM analytics a
JOIN transactions t
WHERE a.id = t.analytics
AND t.status = 'COMPLETED'
AND a.user_id=52094
GROUP by a.source
) t2
ON t1.source = t2.source
ORDER BY frequency DESC
LIMIT 10
Hope this helps.