Drop index query is slow - mysql

This is the query I'm trying to execute:
DROP INDEX id_index on table;
I've been able to drop indexes quickly in the past, but this query ran for almost an hour before I gave up on it. What could be causing this slow pace?

SHOW CREATE TABLE -- If it says ENGINE=MyISAM, the DROP is performed this way:
Copy the entire table data over into a temp (slow due to lots of I/O)
Rebuild all the remaining indexes (very slow, in some cases)
Rename to replace the existing table (always fast)
This can be very slow, depending on the size of the table. This is because of all the disk I/O.
If it says ENGINE=InnoDB, things could be better. But it still matters whether you are DROPping the PRIMARY KEY or not. And possibly whether the KEY is involved in a FOREIGN KEY constraint. I assume old_alter_table is set to OFF.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/alter-table.html
has a lot of details. What you needed to say was ALGORITHM=INPLACE. You probably got ALGORITHM=DEFAULT, and I don't see in the doc what the default is.
ALGORITHM=COPY acts like I mentioned above for MyISAM.
ALGORITHM=INPLACE should take very little time, regardless of the table/index size.
(Be sure to check the details of ALTER for whichever version you are running. There have been several significant changes in recent major versions.)

Related

Analyze + Optimize on InnoDB Tables

Back then when i was working heavily with MyISAM Tables i always had a cronjob which ran
~# mysqlanalyze -o database
I know that MyISAM benefit from this in certain ways e.g.: fragmentation and whatnot
Now, when running the same command on a databse where the majority of tables is InnoDB i wonder if this "does any good" to the tables and is considered a good practice to do so every now and then or if its rather counter productive. Reading alot of :
Table does not support optimize, doing recreate + analyze instead
Which sounds expensive with regards to Disk IO / CPU time ?!
would appreciate some input on this.
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/optimize-table.html says:
For InnoDB tables, OPTIMIZE TABLE is mapped to ALTER TABLE ... FORCE, which rebuilds the table to update index statistics and free unused space in the clustered index.
This does do some good in cases when you had too much fragmentation. Pages will be filled more efficiently, indexes will be rebuilt, and disk space occupied by the table will be reduced if you use innodb_file_per_table (which is the default in recent versions).
It does take time, depending on the size of your table. It will lock the table while it's running. It will require extra disk space while it's running, as it creates a copy of the table.
Doing optimize table on an InnoDB table is usually not necessary to do frequently, but only after you do a lot of insert/update/delete against the table in a way that could result in fragmentation.
ANALYZE TABLE is much less impact for InnoDB. This doesn't require building a copy of the table. It's a read-only action, it just reads a random sample of pages from the table and uses that to estimate the number of rows, average size of rows, and it update statistics about the indexes, to guide the query optimizer. This is safe to run anytime, it will lock that table for moment, but that won't be any greater regardless of the size of the table.
Don't bother. InnoDB almost never needs either ANALYZE or OPTIMIZE; don't waste your time unless you have identified a need.
An exception is a FULLTEXT index on an InnoDB table. Such can benefit from DROP INDEX, then ADD INDEX.
If you are "reloading" the table from new data, then the following avoids downtime:
CREATE TABLE new LIKE real;
load `new`
RENAME TABLE real TO old, new TO real; -- fast, atomic
DROP TABLE old;
(Caveat: The above technique probably has issues if there are FOREIGN KEYS.)

mysql add multiple column to large table in optimised way

I wanted to add 8 new columns to a large mysql(version 5.6) table with innodb having millions of record. I am trying to achieve this in most optimised way.
Is there any advantage of using a single query to adding all columns over adding 8 columns in 8 different queries. If so would like to know why.
On specifying ALGORITHM=INPLACE, LOCK=NONE, What all things i need to take care so that it wont cause any data corruption or application failure!
I was testing out ALGORITHM=INPLACE, LOCK=NONE with the query.
ALTER TABLE table_test ADD COLUMN test_column TINYINT UNSIGNED DEFAULT 0 ALGORITHM=INPLACE LOCK = NONE;
But its taking same time as the query ran with ALGORITHM=DEFAULT. What can be the reason.
Table which im altering is having only primary key index and no other indexes. From application the queries coming to this table are:
insert into table;
select * from table where user_id=uid;
select sum(column) from table where user_id=id and date<NOW();
By "optimized", do you mean "fastest"? Or "least impact on other queries"?
In older versions, the optimal way (using no add-ons) was to put all the ADD COLUMNs in a single ALTER TABLE; then wait until it finishes.
In any version, pt-online-schema-change will add all the columns with only a brief downtime.
Since you mention ALGORITHM=INPLACE, LOCK=NONE, I assume you are using a newer version? So, it may be that 8 ALTERs is optimal. There would be some interference, but perhaps not "too much".
ALGORITHM=DEFAULT lets the server pick the "best". This is almost always really the "best". That is, there is rarely a need to say anything other than DEFAULT.
You can never get data corruption. At worst, a query may fail due to some kind of timeout due to the interference of the ALTER(s). You should always be checking for error (including timeouts), and take handle it in your app.
To discuss the queries...
insert into table;
One row at a time? Or batched? (Batched is more efficient -- perhaps 10x better.)
select * from table;
Surely not! That would give you all the columns for millions of rows. Why should you ever do that?
select count(column) from table where pk=id and date<NOW();
COUNT(col) checks col for being NOT NULL -- Do you need that? If not, then simply do COUNT(*).
WHERE pk=id gives you only one row; so why also qualify with date<NOW()? The PRIMARY KEY makes the query as fast as possible.
The only index is PRIMARY KEY? This seems unusual for a million-row table. Is it a "Fact" table in a "Data Warehouse" app?
Internals
(Caveat: Much of this discussion of Internals is derived indirectly, and could be incorrect.)
For some ALTERs, the work is essentially just in the schema. Eg: Adding options on the end of an ENUM; increasing the size of a VARCHAR.
For some ALTERs with INPLACE, the processing is essentially modifying the data in place -- without having to copy it. Eg: Adding a column at the end.
PRIMARY KEY changes (in InnoDB) necessarily involve rebuilding the BTree containing the data; they cannot be done INPLACE.
Many secondary INDEX operations can be done without touching (other than reading) the data. DROP INDEX throws away a BTree and makes some meta changes. ADD INDEX reads the entire table, building the index BTree on the side, then announcing its existence. CHARACTER SET and COLLATION changes require rebuilding an index.
If the table must be copied over, there is a significant lock on the table. Any ALTER that needs to read all the data has an indirect impact because of the I/O and/or CPU and/or brief locks on blocks/rows/etc.
It is unclear whether the code is smart enough to handle a multi-task ALTER in the most efficient way. Adding 8 columns in one INPLACE pass should be possible, but if it made the code too complex, that operation may be converted to COPY.
Probably a multi-task ALTER will do the 'worst' case. For example, changing the PRIMARY KEY and augmenting an ENUM will simply do both in a single COPY. Since COPY is the original way of doing all ALTERs, it is well debugged and optimized by now. (But it is slow and invasive.)
COPY is really quite simple to implement, mostly involving existing primitives:
Lock real so no one is writing to it
CREATE TABLE new LIKE real;
ALTER TABLE new ... -- whatever you asked for
copy all the rows from real to new -- this is the slow part
RENAME TABLE real TO old, new TO real; -- fast, atomic, etc.
Unlock
DROP TABLE old;
INPLACE is more complex because it must decide among many different algorithms and locking levels. DEFAULT has to punt off to COPY if it cannot do INPLACE.

mysql speed, table index and select/update/insert

We have got a MySQL table which has got more than 7.000.000 (yes seven million) rows.
We are always doing so much SELECT / INSERT / UPDATE queries per 5 seconds.
Is it a good thing that if we create MySQL INDEX for that table? Will there be some bad consequences like data corrupting or loosing MySQL services etc.?
Little info:
MySQL version 5.1.56
Server CentOS
Table engines are MyISAM
MySQL CPU load between 200% - 400% always
In general, indexes will improve the speed of SELECT operations and will slow down INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE operations, as both the base table and the indexes must be modified when a change occurs.
It is very difficult to say such a thing. I would expect that the indexing itself might take some time. But after that you should have some improvements. As said by #Joe and #Patrick, it might hurt your modification time, but the selecting will be faster.
Ofcourse, there are some other ways of improving performance on inserting and updating. You could ofcourse batch updates if it is not important to have change visible immediatly.
The indexes will help dramatically with selects. Especially if the match up well with the commonly filtered fields. And you have a good simple primary key. They will help with both the time of the queries and the processing cycles.
The drawbacks are if you are very often updating/altering/deleting these records, especially the indexed fields. Even in this case though, it is often worth it.
How much you're going to be reporting (select statement) vs updating (should!) hugely affects both your initial design as well as your later adjustments once your db is in the wild. Since you already have what you have, testing will give you the answers you need. If you really do a lot of select queries, and a lot of updating, your solution might be to copy out data now and then to a reporting table. Then you can index like crazy with no ill effects.
You have actually asked a large question, and you should study up on this more. The general things I've mentioned above hold for most all relational dbs, but there are also particular behaviors of the particular databases (MySQL in your case), mainly in how they decide when and where to use indexes.
If you are looking for performance, indexes are the way to go. Indexes speed up your queries. If you have 7 Million records, your queries are probably taking many seconds possibley a minute depending on your memory size.
Generally speaking, I would create indexes that match the most frequent SELECT statements. Everyone talks about the negative impact of indexes on table size and speed but I would neglect those impacts unless you have a table for which you are doing 95% of the time inserts and updates but even then, if those inserts happen at night and you query during the day, go and create those indexes, your users during daytime will appreciate it.
What is the actual time impact to an insert or update statement if there is an additional index, 0.001 secondes maybe? If the index saves you many seconds per each query, I guess the additional time required to update index is well worth it.
The only time I ever had an issue with creating an index (it actually broke the program logic) was when we added a primary key to a table that was previously created (by someone else) without a primary key and the program was expecting that the SELECT statement returns the records in the sequence they were created. Creating the primary key changed that, the records when selecting without any WHERE clause were returned in a different sequence.
This is obviously a wrong design in the first place, nevertheless, if you have an older program and you encounter tables without primary key, I suggest to look at the code that reads that table before adding a primary key, just in case.
One more last thought about creating indexes, the choice of fields and the sequence in which the fields appear in the index have an impact on the performance of the index.
I had the same kind of problem that you describe.
I did a few changes and 1 query passed from 11sec to a few milliseconds
1- Upgraded to MariaDB 10.1
2- Changed ALL my DB to ARIA engine
3- Changed my.cnf to the strict mininum
4- Upgraded php 7.1 (but this one had a little impact)
5- with CentOS : "Yum update" in the terminal or via ssh (by keeping everything up to date)
1- MariaDB is the new Open source version of MYSQL
2- ARIA engine is the evolution of MYISAM
3- my.cnf have usually too much change that affect performance
Here an example
[mysqld]
performance-schema=1
general_log=0
slow_query_log=0
max_allowed_packet=268435456
By removing all extra options from the my.cnf, it's telling mysql to use default values.
In MYSQL 5 (5.1, 5.5, 5.6...) When I did that ; I only noticed a small difference.
But in MariaDB -> the small my.cnf like this did a BIG difference.
******* ALL of those changes ; the server hardware remained the same.
Hope it can help you

Inserting New Column in MYSQL taking too long

We have a huge database and inserting a new column is taking too long. Anyway to speed up things?
Unfortunately, there's probably not much you can do. When inserting a new column, MySQL makes a copy of the table and inserts the new data there. You may find it faster to do
CREATE TABLE new_table LIKE old_table;
ALTER TABLE new_table ADD COLUMN (column definition);
INSERT INTO new_table(old columns) SELECT * FROM old_table;
RENAME table old_table TO tmp, new_table TO old_table;
DROP TABLE tmp;
This hasn't been my experience, but I've heard others have had success. You could also try disabling indices on new_table before the insert and re-enabling later. Note that in this case, you need to be careful not to lose any data which may be inserted into old_table during the transition.
Alternatively, if your concern is impacting users during the change, check out pt-online-schema-change which makes clever use of triggers to execute ALTER TABLE statements while keeping the table being modified available. (Note that this won't speed up the process however.)
There are four main things that you can do to make this faster:
If using innodb_file_per_table the original table may be highly fragmented in the filesystem, so you can try defragmenting it first.
Make the buffer pool as big as sensible, so more of the data, particularly the secondary indexes, fits in it.
Make innodb_io_capacity high enough, perhaps higher than usual, so that insert buffer merging and flushing of modified pages will happen more quickly. Requires MySQL 5.1 with InnoDB plugin or 5.5 and later.
MySQL 5.1 with InnoDB plugin and MySQL 5.5 and later support fast alter table. One of the things that makes a lot faster is adding or rebuilding indexes that are both not unique and not in a foreign key. So you can do this:
A. ALTER TABLE ADD your column, DROP your non-unique indexes that aren't in FKs.
B. ALTER TABLE ADD back your non-unique, non-FK indexes.
This should provide these benefits:
a. Less use of the buffer pool during step A because the buffer pool will only need to hold some of the indexes, the ones that are unique or in FKs. Indexes are randomly updated during this step so performance becomes much worse if they don't fully fit in the buffer pool. So more chance of your rebuild staying fast.
b. The fast alter table rebuilds the index by sorting the entries then building the index. This is faster and also produces an index with a higher page fill factor, so it'll be smaller and faster to start with.
The main disadvantage is that this is in two steps and after the first one you won't have some indexes that may be required for good performance. If that is a problem you can try the copy to a new table approach, using just the unique and FK indexes at first for the new table, then adding the non-unique ones later.
It's only in MySQL 5.6 but the feature request in http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=59214 increases the speed with which insert buffer changes are flushed to disk and limits how much space it can take in the buffer pool. This can be a performance limit for big jobs. the insert buffer is used to cache changes to secondary index pages.
We know that this is still frustratingly slow sometimes and that a true online alter table is very highly desirable
This is my personal opinion. For an official Oracle view, contact an Oracle public relations person.
James Day, MySQL Senior Principal Support Engineer, Oracle
usually new line insert means that there are many indexes.. so I would suggest reconsidering indexing.
Michael's solution may speed things up a bit, but perhaps you should have a look at the database and try to break the big table into smaller ones. Take a look at this: link. Normalizing your database tables may save you loads of time in the future.

Can a killed ALTER TABLE statement leave an index partially built?

We started an ALTER TABLE which dropped one index and added another. Although we were only expecting the table to be locked for writes, reads started queueing up, so we killed the ALTER process. But when the KILL finished, the old index was gone, and the new index was there in its place, with a much lower cardinality than expected.
Searching on the table seems to be faster now, so it seems like the ALTER went through fine, but we're not sure. Is it possible that our KILL has left the index in a partially-built stage?
If the index is there you may assume that it is complete.
You can use SHOW CREATE TABLE or SHOW INDEXES to see the indexes on the table.
As noted in the comments, the cardinality listed by SHOW INDEXES is just an estimate.
One test you can try is to run SHOW INDEXES, then run ANALYZE TABLE, then run SHOW INDEXES again and see how the estimated cardinality value changes.
By your description (both reads/writes locked) you are most likely using an older version of InnoDB, or adding an index to a column in utf8 character set.
Here is how it works in your version:
Empty table is created with the new table definition.
Rows are copied 1 after the other from old table to new table (new indexes are also created).
Once copy is complete, old table is deleted, new table is renamed.
(If you cancel between steps 2&3 the new table is just safely removed.)
For full disclosure - here is how it works in InnoDB plugin (default for MySQL 5.5, available from 5.1+):
Table is read through to find data for the index, and written to a temporary file.
The temporary file is sorted.
The index is created by inserting the data in order.
(This method is more optimized. InnoDB calls is "fast-index creation".)