Mysql - Using temporary; Using filesort - mysql

I have two tables like this
CREATE TABLE `vendors` (
vid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
updated timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (vid),
key(updated)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
CREATE TABLE `products` (
vid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default 0,
pid int unsigned default 0,
flag int(11) unsigned DEFAULT '0',
PRIMARY KEY (vid),
KEY (pid)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
This is a simple query
> explain select vendors.vid, pid from products, vendors where pid=1 and vendors.vid=products.vid order by updated;
+------+-------------+----------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+---------------------+------+----------------------------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+------+-------------+----------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+---------------------+------+----------------------------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | products | ref | PRIMARY,pid | pid | 5 | const | 1 | Using index; Using temporary; Using filesort |
| 1 | SIMPLE | vendors | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | social.products.vid | 1 | |
+------+-------------+----------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+---------------------+------+----------------------------------------------+
I am wondering why mysql need to use temporary table and filesort for such a simple query. As you can see that ORDER BY field has index.
mysql fiddle here : http://sqlfiddle.com/#!9/3d9be/30

That will be the optimum query in that case, doesn't always have to go to the index for the fastest result. The optimiser may choose to use the index when the record count goes up. You can try inserting 10,000 dummy records and seeing if this is the case.
If I flip the conditions here, you will find it will use the index, since I have supplied the table where the where condition is joined on later in the query. We need to look at records in table products after the join is made, so in essence I've made it harder work, so the index is used. It'll still run in the same time. You can try pitting the 2 queries against each other to see what happens. Here it is:
EXPLAIN
SELECT vendors.vid, products.pid
FROM vendors
INNER JOIN products ON vendors.vid = products.vid
WHERE pid = 1
ORDER BY vendors.updated DESC
You can find a detailed explanation here: Fix Using where; Using temporary; Using filesort

Related

SELECT statement optimization MySQL

I am looking for a way how to make my SELECT query even faster than it is now, because I have a feeling it should be possible to make it faster.
Here is the query
SELECT r.id_customer, ROUND(AVG(tp.percentile_weighted), 2) AS percentile
FROM tag_rating AS r USE INDEX (value_date_add)
JOIN tag_product AS tp ON (tp.id_pair = r.id_pair)
WHERE
r.value = 1 AND
r.date_add > '2020-08-08 11:56:00'
GROUP BY r.id_customer
Here is EXPLAIN SELECT
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+---------------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+---------------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | r | ref | value_date_add | value_date_add | 1 | const | 449502 | Using index condition; Using where; Using temporary; Using filesort |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+---------------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | tp | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | dev.r.id_pair | 1 | |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+----------------+---------+---------------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
Now the tables are
CREATE TABLE `tag_product` (
`id_pair` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`id_product` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`id_user_tag` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`status` tinyint(3) NOT NULL,
`percentile` decimal(8,4) unsigned NOT NULL,
`percentile_weighted` decimal(8,4) unsigned NOT NULL,
`elo` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`date_add` datetime NOT NULL,
`date_upd` datetime NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id_pair`),
UNIQUE KEY `id_product_id_user_tag` (`id_product`,`id_user_tag`),
KEY `status` (`status`),
KEY `id_user_tag` (`id_user_tag`),
CONSTRAINT `tag_product_ibfk_5` FOREIGN KEY (`id_user_tag`) REFERENCES `user_tag` (`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4;
CREATE TABLE `tag_rating` (
`id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`id_customer` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`id_pair` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`id_duel` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`value` tinyint(4) NOT NULL,
`date_add` datetime NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
UNIQUE KEY `id_duel_id_pair` (`id_duel`,`id_pair`),
KEY `id_pair_id_customer` (`id_pair`,`id_customer`),
KEY `value` (`value`),
KEY `value_date_add` (`value`,`date_add`),
KEY `id_customer_value_date_add` (`id_customer`,`value`,`date_add`),
CONSTRAINT `tag_rating_ibfk_3` FOREIGN KEY (`id_pair`) REFERENCES `tag_product` (`id_pair`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE,
CONSTRAINT `tag_rating_ibfk_6` FOREIGN KEY (`id_duel`) REFERENCES `tag_rating_duel` (`id_duel`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE,
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4;
The table tag_product has about 250k rows and the tag_rating has about 1M rows.
My issue is that the SQL query takes about 0.8s on average on my machine. I would like to make it ideally under 0.5s while also assuming the tables can get like 10 times bigger. The amount of rows taken into play should be about the same because I have a date condition (I only want less than a month old rows).
Is this possible to make faster just by some trick (aka not restructuring my tables)? When I slightly modify (dont join the smaller table) the statement as
SELECT r.id_customer, COUNT(*)
FROM tag_rating AS r USE INDEX (value_date_add)
WHERE
r.value = 1 AND
r.date_add > '2020-08-08 11:56:00'
GROUP BY r.id_customer;
here is EXPLAIN SELECT
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------+----------------+---------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------+----------------+---------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | r | ref | value_date_add | value_date_add | 1 | const | 449502 | Using index condition; Using where; Using temporary; Using filesort |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------+----------------+---------+-------+--------+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
it takes about 0.25s which is great. So the JOIN makes it 3x slower. Is that inevitable? I feel like since I am joining via primary key it shouldnt make a query 3x slower.
---UPDATE---
This is actually my query. The number of different id_customer values is about 1 thousand and is expected to rise, the number of rows with value=1 is exactly half. So far the query performance seems to be slowing down linearly based on the number of rows in rating table
Using adding id_pair at the end of the id_customer_value_date_add or value_id_customer_date_add index doesnt help.
SELECT r.id_customer, ROUND(AVG(tp.percentile_weighted), 2) AS percentile
FROM tag_rating AS r USE INDEX (id_customer_value_date_add)
JOIN tag_product AS tp ON (tp.id_pair = r.id_pair)
WHERE
r.value = 1 AND
r.id_customer IN (2593179,1461878,2318871,2654090,2840415,2852531,2987432,3473275,3960453,3961798,4129734,4191571,4202912,4204817,4211263,4248789,765650,1341317,1430380,2116196,3367674,3701901,3995273,4118307,4136114,4236589,783262,913493,1034296,2626574,3574634,3785772,2825128,4157953,3331279,4180367,4208685,4287879,1038898,1445750,1975108,3658055,4185296,4276189,428693,4248631,1892448,3773855,2901524,3830868,3934786) AND
r.date_add > '2020-08-08 11:56:00'
GROUP BY r.id_customer
This is EXPLAIN SELECT
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+--------+--------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+--------+--------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | r | range | id_customer_value_date_add | id_customer_value_date_add | 10 | | 558906 | Using where; Using index |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+--------+--------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | tp | eq_ref | PRIMARY,status | PRIMARY | 4 | dev.r.id_pair | 1 | Using where |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------------------+----------------------------+---------+----------------------------------+--------+--------------------------+
Any tips are appreciated. Thank you
INDEX(value, date_add, id_customer, id_pair)
Would be "covering", giving an extra boost on performance for both queries. And also for Gordon's formulation.
At the same time, get rid of these:
KEY `value` (`value`),
KEY `value_date_add` (`value`,`date_add`),
because they might get in the way of the Optimizer picking the new index. Any other queries that were using those indexes will easily use the new index.
If you are not otherwise using tag_rating.id, get rid of it and promote the UNIQUE to PRIMARY KEY.
Try writing the query using a correlated subquery:
SELECT r.id_customer,
(SELECT ROUND(AVG(tp.percentile_weighted), 2)
FROM tag_product tp
WHERE tp.id_pair = r.id_pair
) AS percentile
FROM tag_rating AS r
WHERE r.value = 1 AND
r.date_add > '2020-08-08 11:56:00';
This eliminates the outer aggregation which should be faster.

MySQL: why is a query using a VIEW less efficient compared to a query directly using the view's underlying JOIN?

I have three tables, bug, bugrule and bugtrace, for which relationships are:
bug 1--------N bugrule
id = bugid
bugrule 0---------N bugtrace
id = ruleid
Because I'm almost always interested in relations between bug <---> bugtrace I have created an appropriate VIEW which is used as part of several queries. Interestingly, queries using this VIEW have significantly worse performance than equivalent queries using the underlying JOIN explicitly.
VIEW definition:
CREATE VIEW bugtracev AS
SELECT t.*, r.bugid
FROM bugtrace AS t
LEFT JOIN bugrule AS r ON t.ruleid=r.id
WHERE r.version IS NULL
Execution plan for a query using the VIEW (bad performance):
mysql> explain
SELECT c.id,state,
(SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(t.id)) FROM bugtracev AS t
WHERE t.bugid=c.id)
FROM bug AS c
WHERE c.version IS NULL
AND c.id<10;
+----+--------------------+-------+-------+---------------+--------+---------+-----------------+---------+-----------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+--------------------+-------+-------+---------------+--------+---------+-----------------+---------+-----------------------+
| 1 | PRIMARY | c | range | id_2,id | id_2 | 8 | NULL | 3 | Using index condition |
| 2 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | t | index | NULL | ruleid | 9 | NULL | 1426004 | Using index |
| 2 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | r | ref | id_2,id | id_2 | 8 | bugapp.t.ruleid | 1 | Using where |
+----+--------------------+-------+-------+---------------+--------+---------+-----------------+---------+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Execution plan for a query using the underlying JOIN directly (good performance):
mysql> explain
SELECT c.id,state,
(SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(t.id))
FROM bugtrace AS t
LEFT JOIN bugrule AS r ON t.ruleid=r.id
WHERE r.version IS NULL
AND r.bugid=c.id)
FROM bug AS c
WHERE c.version IS NULL
AND c.id<10;
+----+--------------------+-------+-------+---------------+--------+---------+-------------+--------+-----------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+--------------------+-------+-------+---------------+--------+---------+-------------+--------+-----------------------+
| 1 | PRIMARY | c | range | id_2,id | id_2 | 8 | NULL | 3 | Using index condition |
| 2 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | r | ref | id_2,id,bugid | bugid | 8 | bugapp.c.id | 1 | Using where |
| 2 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | t | ref | ruleid | ruleid | 9 | bugapp.r.id | 713002 | Using index |
+----+--------------------+-------+-------+---------------+--------+---------+-------------+--------+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
CREATE TABLE statements (reduced by irrelevant columns) are:
mysql> show create table bug;
CREATE TABLE `bug` (
`id` bigint(20) NOT NULL,
`version` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`state` varchar(16) DEFAULT NULL,
UNIQUE KEY `id_2` (`id`,`version`),
KEY `id` (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
mysql> show create table bugrule;
CREATE TABLE `bugrule` (
`id` bigint(20) NOT NULL,
`version` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`bugid` bigint(20) NOT NULL,
UNIQUE KEY `id_2` (`id`,`version`),
KEY `id` (`id`),
KEY `bugid` (`bugid`),
CONSTRAINT `bugrule_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`bugid`) REFERENCES `bug` (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
mysql> show create table bugtrace;
CREATE TABLE `bugtrace` (
`id` bigint(20) NOT NULL,
`ruleid` bigint(20) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `ruleid` (`ruleid`),
CONSTRAINT `bugtrace_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`ruleid`) REFERENCES `bugrule` (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
You ask why about query optimization for a couple of complex queries with COUNT(DISTINCT val) and dependent subqueries. It's hard to know why for sure.
You will probably fix most of your performance problem by getting rid of your dependent subquery, though. Try something like this:
SELECT c.id,state, cnt.cnt
FROM bug AS c
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT bugid, COUNT(DISTINCT id) cnt
FROM bugtracev
GROUP BY bugid
) cnt ON c.id = cnt.bugid
WHERE c.version IS NULL
AND c.id<10;
Why does this help? To satisfy the query the optimizer can choose to run the GROUP BY subquery just once, rather than many times. And, you can use EXPLAIN on the GROUP BY subquery to understand its performance.
You may also get a performance boost by creating a compound index on bugrule that matches the query in your view. Try this one.
CREATE INDEX bugrule_v ON bugrule (version, ruleid, bugid)
and try switching the last two columns like so
CREATE INDEX bugrule_v ON bugrule (version, ruleid, bugid)
These indexes are called covering indexes because they contain all the columns needed to satisfy your query. version appears first because that helps optimize WHERE version IS NULL in your view definition. That makes it faster.
Pro tip: Avoid using SELECT * in views and queries, especially when you have performance problems. Instead, list the columns you actually need. The * may force the query optimizer to avoid a covering index, even when the index would help.
When using MySQL 5.6 (or older), try with at least MySQL 5.7. According to What’s New in MySQL 5.7?:
We have to a large extent unified the handling of derived tables and views. Until now, subqueries in the FROM clause (derived tables) were unconditionally materialized, while views created from the same query expressions were sometimes materialized and sometimes merged into the outer query. This behavior, beside being inconsistent, can lead to a serious performance penalty.

MySQL with JOIN not using index

Problem with MySQL version 5.7.18. Earlier versions of MySQL behaves as supposed to.
Here are two tables. Table 1:
CREATE TABLE `test_events` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`event` int(11) DEFAULT '0',
`manager` int(11) DEFAULT '0',
`base_id` int(11) DEFAULT '0',
`create_time` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`client` int(11) DEFAULT '0',
`event_time` datetime DEFAULT '0000-00-00 00:00:00'
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
ALTER TABLE `test_events`
ADD PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
ADD KEY `client` (`client`),
ADD KEY `event_time` (`event_time`),
ADD KEY `manager` (`manager`),
ADD KEY `base_id` (`base_id`),
ADD KEY `create_time` (`create_time`);
And the second table:
CREATE TABLE `test_event_types` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`name` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
`create_time` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`base` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
ALTER TABLE `test_event_types`
ADD PRIMARY KEY (`id`);
Let's try to select last event from base "314":
EXPLAIN SELECT `test_events`.`create_time`
FROM `test_events`
LEFT JOIN `test_event_types`
ON ( `test_events`.`event` = `test_event_types`.`id` )
WHERE base = 314
ORDER BY `test_events`.`create_time` DESC
LIMIT 1;
+----+-------------+------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+--------+----------+----------------------------------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | partitions | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | filtered | Extra |
+----+-------------+------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+--------+----------+----------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | test_events | NULL | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 434928 | 100.00 | Using temporary; Using filesort |
| 1 | SIMPLE | test_event_types | NULL | ALL | PRIMARY | NULL | NULL | NULL | 44 | 2.27 | Using where; Using join buffer (Block Nested Loop) |
+----+-------------+------------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+--------+----------+----------------------------------------------------+
2 rows in set, 1 warning (0.00 sec)
MySQL is not using index and reads the whole table.
Without WHERE statement:
EXPLAIN SELECT `test_events`.`create_time`
FROM `test_events`
LEFT JOIN `test_event_types`
ON ( `test_events`.`event` = `test_event_types`.`id` )
ORDER BY `test_events`.`create_time` DESC
LIMIT 1;
+----+-------------+------------------+------------+--------+---------------+-------------+---------+-----------------------+------+----------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table | partitions | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | filtered | Extra |
+----+-------------+------------------+------------+--------+---------------+-------------+---------+-----------------------+------+----------+-------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | test_events | NULL | index | NULL | create_time | 4 | NULL | 1 | 100.00 | NULL |
| 1 | SIMPLE | test_event_types | NULL | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | m16.test_events.event | 1 | 100.00 | Using index |
+----+-------------+------------------+------------+--------+---------------+-------------+---------+-----------------------+------+----------+-------------+
2 rows in set, 1 warning (0.00 sec)
Now it uses index.
MySQL 5.5.55 uses index in both cases. Why is it so and what to do with it?
I don't know the difference you are seeing in your previous and current installations but the servers behaviour makes sense.
SELECT test_events.create_time FROM test_events LEFT JOIN test_event_types ON ( test_events.event = test_event_types.id ) ORDER BY test_events.create_time DESC LIMIT 1;
In this query you do not have a where clause but you are fetching one row only. And that's after sorting by create_time which happens to have an index. And that index can be used for sorting. But let's see the second query.
SELECT test_events.create_time FROM test_events LEFT JOIN test_event_types ON ( test_events.event = test_event_types.id ) WHERE base = 314 ORDER BY test_events.create_time DESC LIMIT 1
You don't have an index on the base column. So no index can be used on that. To find the relevent records mysql has to do a table scan. Having identified the relevent rows, they need to be sorted. But in this case the query planner has decided that it's just not worth it to use the index on create_time
I see several problems with your setup, the first being not having and index on base as already mentioned. But why is base varchar? You appear to be storing integers in it.
ALTER TABLE test_events
ADD PRIMARY KEY (id),
ADD KEY client (client),
ADD KEY event_time (event_time),
ADD KEY manager (manager),
ADD KEY base_id (base_id),
ADD KEY create_time (create_time);
And making multiple indexes like this doesn't make much sense in mysql. That's because mysql can use only one index per table for queries. You would be far better off with one or two indexes. Possibly multi column indexes.
I think your ideal index would contain both create_time and event fields
base = 314 with base VARCHAR... is a performance problem. Either put quotes around 314 or make base some integer type.
You appear not to need LEFT. If not, then do a plain JOIN so that the optimizer has the freedom to start with an INDEX(base), which is then missing and needed.
As for the differences between 5.5 and 5.6 and 5.7, there have been a number of Optimization changes; you may have encountered a regression. But I don't want to chase that until you have improved the query and indexes.
I stumbled upon same scenario where MySQL was using table scan, instead of INDEX search.
This could be because of one of the reasons, mentioned in MySQL docs:
The table is so small that it is faster to perform a table scan than to bother with a key lookup. This is common for tables with fewer than 10 rows and a short row length.
mysql docs link
And when I checked EXPLAIN of MySQL query in production server with large number of rows, it used INDEX search as expected.
Its one of the MySQL optimizations, under the hood :)

MySql Record Matching Criteria With Latest Date

I have a mySql table where all status changes are recorded. I want to be able to query the status of all items on a specific date, or the last date for all items. The table I have now is:
CREATE TABLE `tra_rel_sta` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`tra_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`sta_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`changed_on` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
`changed_by` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`comments` text,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `tra_id` (`tra_id`),
KEY `rel` (`tra_id`,`sta_id`,`changed_on`),
KEY `sta_id` (`sta_id`),
KEY `changed_on` (`changed_on`),
KEY `tra_changed` (`tra_id`,`changed_on`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=51734 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
(I know I'm probably overdoing the indexes, but I haven't exactly figured out how to optimize indexes yet).
The query I'm using now, which works is:
SELECT rel.changed_on, rel.changed_by, rel.tra_id, sta.id AS sta_id, sta.status, sta.description, sta.onHold, sta.awaitingApproval, sta.approved, sta.complete, sta.locked
FROM (
SELECT tra_id, MAX(changed_on) AS lst
FROM tra_rel_sta
GROUP BY tra_id
) AS rec
LEFT JOIN tra_rel_sta AS rel ON rel.changed_on = rec.lst AND rel.tra_id = rec.tra_id
LEFT JOIN tra_status AS sta ON sta.id = rel.sta_id
If I want to use a specific date, I insert a WHERE statement in the sub-query.
This works, but it takes about 0.65 seconds to run in PHP with about 51,733 records in the table. This query is used as a sub query in several others when I need to know the last status of an object, and as a result, is slowing down many application.
I've tried to use a sub query in the WHERE statement as described in MySQL: how to select record with latest date before a certain date but it takes almost twice as long. I've tried using a JOIN statement as described in MySQL select of record with latest date but I'm getting about the same or just slightly slower results.
How can I optimize this query or fix my indexes to make this more effective?
Thanks!!
As requested, EXPLAIN of query:
id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra
---|-------------|-------------|--------|-----------------------------------|---------|---------|-------------------|-------|-------------
1 | PRIMARY | <derived2> | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 49931 | NULL
1 | PRIMARY | rel | ref | tra_id,rel,changed_on,tra_changed | tra_id | 5 | rec.tra_id | 1 | Using where
1 | PRIMARY | sta | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | csinfo.rel.sta_id | 1 | NULL
2 | DERIVED | tra_rel_sta | index | tra_id,rel,tra_changed | tra_id | 5 | NULL | 49931 | NULL

Why does mysql require filesort when the order by col has an index?

I create a table like this:
CREATE TABLE `testtable` (
`id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`created_at` datetime NOT NULL,
`updated_at` timestamp NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `test_updated_at_index` (`updated_at`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
And the explain on a select says that it is using filesort:
mysql> explain select * from testtable order by updated_at;
+----+-------------+-----------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+----------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-----------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+----------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | testtable | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 1 | Using filesort |
+----+-------------+-----------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+----------------+
Why does it not use the index? Additionally, if I just remove the created_at column, then it DOES use the index!
Why does adding a single additional column cause mysql to forget how to use the index?
How can I change the table so that mysql DOES use the index to order by, even with an additional column?
There is no WHERE clause, so you read all records from the table. Most often it is way faster to read the table directly, even if you must sort the data afterwards, rather than looping over an index and picking each record separately.
Only if you were interested only in a small part of the table, say 2% of its data, would it make sense to use the index. Or if you were only interested in the indexed column alone, of course.