MySQL MyISAM table index cardinality is zero - mysql

I have a table containing 60 million rows. The structure is like entryid, date, sourceid, detail, views. (entryid, date, sourceid, detail) is the PK, and I also have indexes for each field except views.
The problem is the cardinalities of the four indexes are zero, but I am sure they should not.
I wonder why is that? And does it mean the index doesn't work?

It's possible that the table statistics have not been updated.
See this page on optimizing MyISAM tables:
To help MySQL better optimize queries, use ANALYZE TABLE or run
myisamchk --analyze on a table after it has been loaded with data.
This updates a value for each index part that indicates the average
number of rows that have the same value. (For unique indexes, this is
always 1.) MySQL uses this to decide which index to choose when you
join two tables based on a nonconstant expression. You can check the
result from the table analysis by using SHOW INDEX FROM tbl_name and
examining the Cardinality value. myisamchk --description --verbose
shows index distribution information.
The best way to determine whether an index is helping is to explain a query:
mysql> explain select 1;
+----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+----------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+----------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | No tables used |
+----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Related

MySQL Partitioning and Automatic Movement of Rows

I have a table with ~6M rows that is extracting around ~20,000-30,000 rows per query with index optimization. However, as a lot of people are extracting these rows consecutively (every 30 seconds or so) the site will often time out for people.
I recently migrated the database to a 3-server MySQL cluster with a huge amount of RAM (512GB per server) and the performance haven't improved a lot.
I was wondering if partioning would be the best way to proceed to improve performance. As I have absolutely no experience with partioning I thought I would ask here.
My question is, all of these rows have a column that will either have the value 0, 1, 2 or 3.
Would it be possible somehow to place all the rows with value 1 in a certain column on one partition, and all rows with value 2 in a column in another one? And would they move automatically based on the value being updated in the primary table? And most importantly, could it help out with performance as it would only have to look through finding 1 row in 20,000-30,000 instead of 6,000,000
Yes, MySQL supports partitioning. You can define the partitions pretty well, like:
CREATE TABLE MyTable (
id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
somestuff INT,
otherstuff VARCHAR(100),
KEY (somestuff)
) PARTITION BY HASH(id) PARTITIONS 4;
INSERT INTO MyTable () VALUES (), (), (), ();
You can verify how many rows are in each partition after this:
SELECT PARTITION_NAME, TABLE_ROWS FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PARTITIONS WHERE TABLE_NAME='MyTable';
+----------------+------------+
| PARTITION_NAME | TABLE_ROWS |
+----------------+------------+
| p0 | 1 |
| p1 | 1 |
| p2 | 1 |
| p3 | 1 |
+----------------+------------+
However, there are two things that trip people up when they try to use partitioning in MySQL:
First, as https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/partitioning-limitations-partitioning-keys-unique-keys.html says:
every unique key on the table must use every column in the table's partitioning expression.
This means if you want to partition by somestuff in the example above, you can't. That would fail the requirement that primary key include the column named in the partition expression.
ALTER TABLE MyTable PARTITION BY HASH(somestuff) PARTITIONS 4;
ERROR 1503 (HY000): A PRIMARY KEY must include all columns in the table's partitioning function
You can get around this by removing any primary key or unique key constraints from your table, but that leaves you with kind of a malformed table.
Second, partitioning speeds up queries only if you can take advantage of partition pruning, and this happens only if your query conditions include the column used in the partition expression.
mysql> EXPLAIN PARTITIONS SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE SomeStuff = 3;
+----+-------------+---------+-------------+------+---------------+-----------+---------+-------+------+-------+
| id | select_type | table | partitions | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+---------+-------------+------+---------------+-----------+---------+-------+------+-------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | MyTable | p0,p1,p2,p3 | ref | somestuff | somestuff | 5 | const | 4 | NULL |
+----+-------------+---------+-------------+------+---------------+-----------+---------+-------+------+-------+
Note this says it will need to scan partitions p0,p1,p2,p3 — i.e. the whole table. There is no partition pruning, therefore no performance improvement because it is not reducing the number of rows examined.
If you do search for a specific value in the column used in the partitioning expression, you can see that MySQL is able to reduce the number of partitions it scans:
mysql> EXPLAIN PARTITIONS SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE id = 3;
+----+-------------+---------+------------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+
| id | select_type | table | partitions | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+---------+------------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | MyTable | p3 | const | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | const | 1 | NULL |
+----+-------------+---------+------------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+
Partitioning can help a lot in very specific circumstances, but partitioning isn't as versatile as most people think.
In most cases, it's better to define more specific indexes in your table to support the queries you need to run.

SELECT DISTINCT on two TEXT columns slow in MySQL 5.7.20

A "select distinct col1,col2 from table1" where col1 and col2 are of type TEXT and table1 has about 65K rows works fine with MySQL 5.5.58. Now that I've upgraded to MySQL 5.7.20 it takes almost an hour! Does anyone know of any changes to MySQL that may be causing this? Does anyone have any suggestions how col1 and col2 should be optimally indexed for this query, or what other settings I should check to make this query run faster? I don't get the feeling that indexes are even being used since EXPLAIN says it's using a temporary table and no keys:
mysql> `
explain SELECT DISTINCT author,sort_author from itemsbyauthor;
+----+-------------+---------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+-------+----------+-----------------+
| id | select_type | table | partitions | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | filtered | Extra |
+----+-------------+---------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+-------+----------+-----------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | itemsbyauthor | NULL | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 64727 | 100.00 | Using temporary |
+----+-------------+---------------+------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+-------+----------+-----------------+
1 row in set, 1 warning (0.00 sec)
In many cases, MySQL doesn't use prefix indexes properly and it seems this is one of these cases.
Do you really need the column type to be TEXT?
From the column names, it looks like the columns are holding author names, which seems like a relatively short string (let's say, up to 50 or 100 characters)?
I would re-consider the column type and try to alter it to VARCHAR with a fixed size, instead of TEXT.
Then, add a compound index that includes both columns.

Why are no keys used in this EXPLAIN?

I was expecting this query to use a key.
mysql> DESCRIBE TABLE Foo;
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | bigint(20) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| name | varchar(50) | NO | UNI | NULL | |
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT id FROM Foo WHERE name='foo';
+----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | Impossible WHERE noticed after reading const tables |
+----+-------------+-------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------------------------------+
Foo has a unique index on name, so why isn't the index being used in the SELECT?
From the MySQL Manual page entitled EXPLAIN Output Format:
Impossible WHERE noticed after reading const tables (JSON property:
message)
MySQL has read all const (and system) tables and notice that the WHERE
clause is always false.
and the definition of const tables, from the Page entitled Constants and Constant Tables:
A MySQL constant is something more than a mere literal in the query.
It can also be the contents of a constant table, which is defined as
follows:
A table with zero rows, or with only one row
A table expression that is restricted with a WHERE condition,
containing expressions of the form column = constant, for all the
columns of the table's primary key, or for all the columns of any of
the table's unique keys (provided that the unique columns are also
defined as NOT NULL).
The second reference is a page and half long. Please refer to it.
const
const
The table has at most one matching row, which is read at the start of
the query. Because there is only one row, values from the column in
this row can be regarded as constants by the rest of the optimizer.
const tables are very fast because they are read only once.
const is used when you compare all parts of a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE
index to constant values. In the following queries, tbl_name can be
used as a const table:
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE primary_key=1;
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE primary_key_part1=1 AND
primary_key_part2=2;
It could be because that the said table Foo very less volume of data. In such case optimizer will choose to do table scan rather than looking through index.
As MySQL Documentation clearly says
Indexes are less important for queries on small tables, or big tables
where report queries process most or all of the rows. When a query
needs to access most of the rows, reading sequentially is faster than
working through an index. Sequential reads minimize disk seeks, even
if not all the rows are needed for the query.

can spatial indexes be used for join in mysql?

Can spatial indexes be used for joining tables in mysql?
I have two tables with a GEOMETRY column and a spatial index on it. The table is MyISAM.
I would like to join these tables on the rows which intersect.
I cannot get mysql to use the spatial indexes despite using FORCE INDEX in my query.
The query is:
SELECT *
FROM a FORCE INDEX FOR JOIN (asidx)
JOIN b FORCE INDEX FOR JOIN (bsidx)
ON Intersects(a.g, b.g) -- g is the name of the GEOMETRY
The explain plan is:
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
| 1 | SIMPLE | a | ALL | asidx | NULL | NULL | NULL | 50000 | |
| 1 | SIMPLE | b | ALL | bsidx | NULL | NULL | NULL | 50000 | Using where; Using join buffer |
Why aren't the indexes use?
For 50k rows tables it runs for 15 minutes.
How can I make it faster?
Yes, spatial indexes can be used for joins, but you aren't using an index for your join.
In order for a index to be used for a search, MySQL needs a constant, or an expression that refers to a data column that has already been read.
You're not referencing an indexed column in your ON clause. You're referencing 0 or 1, which is the result of the INTERSECTS() function.
Your ON clause specifies a function on columns from both tables in the join. MySQL won't have the column values required for the function until both records are already read, so no index can be used for the join, requiring a full scan.
Basically, MySQL doesn't know if two records go together until it tries it, so it must try every combination.
Perhaps a better solution would be to precalculate a table of intersection pairs, store them in a separate (junction) table, and join that way.

Why does removing this index in MySQL speed up my query 100x?

I have the following MySQL table (simplified):
CREATE TABLE `track` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`title` varchar(256) NOT NULL,
`is_active` tinyint(1) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `is_active` (`is_active`, `id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=7495088 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
The 'is_active' column marks rows that I want to ignore in most, but not all, of my queries. I have some queries that read chunks out of this table periodically. One of them looks like this:
SELECT id,title from track where (track.is_active=1 and track.id > 5580702) ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 10;
This query takes over a minute to execute. Here's the execution plan:
> EXPLAIN SELECT id,title from track where (track.is_active=1 and track.id > 5580702) ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 10;
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------+--------+---------+-------+---------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------+--------+---------+-------+---------+-------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | t | ref | PRIMARY,is_active | is_active | 1 | const | 3747543 | Using where |
+----+-------------+-------+------+----------------+--------+---------+-------+---------+-------------+
Now, if I tell MySQL to ignore the 'is_active' index, the query happens instantaneously.
> EXPLAIN SELECT id,title from track IGNORE INDEX(is_active) WHERE (track.is_active=1 AND track.id > 5580702) ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 10;
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+---------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+---------+-------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | t | range | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | NULL | 1597518 | Using where |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+---------+-------------+
Now, what's really strange is that if I FORCE MySQL to use the 'is_active' index, the query once again happens instantaneously!
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+---------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+---------+-------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | t | range | is_active |is_active| 5 | NULL | 1866730 | Using where |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+---------+-------------+
I just don't understand this behavior. In the 'is_active' index, rows should be sorted by is_active, followed by id. I use both the 'is_active' and 'id' columns in my query, so it seems like it should only need to do a few hops around the tree to find the IDs, then use those IDs to retrieve the titles from the table.
What's going on?
EDIT: More info on what I'm doing:
Query cache is disabled
Running OPTIMIZE TABLE and ANALYZE TABLE had no effect
6,620,372 rows have 'is_active' set to True. 874,714 rows have 'is_active' set to False.
Using FORCE INDEX(is_active) once again speeds up the query.
MySQL version 5.1.54
It looks like MySQL is making a poor decision about how to use the index.
From that query plan, it is showing it could have used either the PRIMARY or is_active index, and it has chosen is_active in order to narrow by track.is_active first. However, it is only using the first column of the index (track.is_active). That gets it 3747543 results which then have to be filtered and sorted.
If it had chosen the PRIMARY index, it would be able to narrow down to 1597518 rows using the index, and they would be retrieved in order of track.id already, which should require no further sorting. That would be faster.
New information:
In the third case where you are using FORCE INDEX, MySQL is using the is_active index but now instead of only using the first column, it is using both columns (see key_len). It is therefore now able to narrow by is_active and sort and filter by id using the same index, and since is_active is a single constant, the ORDER BY is satisfied by the second column (ie the rows from a single branch of the index are already in sorted order). This seems to be an even better outcome than using PRIMARY - and probably what you intended in the first place, right?
I don't know why it wasn't using both columns of this index without FORCE INDEX, unless the query has changed in a subtle way in between. If not I'd put it down to MySQL making bad decisions.
I think the speedup is due to your where clause. I am assuming that it is only retrieving a small subset of the rows in the entire large table. It is faster to do a table scan of the retrieved data for is_active on the small subset than to do the filtering through a large index file. Traversing a single column index is much faster than traversing a combined index.
Few things you could try:
Do an OPTIMIZE and CHECK on your table, so mysql will re-calculate index values
have a look at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/index-hints.html - you can tell mysql to choose the right index in different cases