Eliminating values from one table with another. Super slow - mysql

Question

In the same datbase I have a table messages whos columns: id, title, text I want. I want only the records of which title has no entries in the table lastlogon who's title equivalent is then named username.
I have been using this SQL command in PHP, it generally took 2-3 seconds to pull up:
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM messages WHERE title NOT IN (SELECT username FROM lastlogon) LIMIT 1000
This was all good until the table lastlogon started to have about 80% of the values table messages. Messages has about 8000 entries, lastlogon about 7000. Now it takes about a minute to 2 minutes for it to go through. MySQL shoots up to very high CPU usage.
I tried the following but had no luck reducing the time:
SELECT id,title,text FROM messages a LEFT OUTER JOIN lastlogon b ON (a.title = b.username) LIMIT 1000
Why all of a sudden is it taking so long for such low amount of entries? I tried restarting mysql and apache multiple times. I am using debian linux.
Edit: Here are the structures
--
-- Table structure for table `lastlogon`
--
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `lastlogon` (
`username` varchar(25) NOT NULL,
`lastlogon` date NOT NULL,
`datechecked` date NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`username`),
KEY `username` (`username`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
-- --------------------------------------------------------
--
-- Table structure for table `messages`
--
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `messages` (
`id` smallint(9) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`title` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`name` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`text` mediumtext,
`folder` tinyint(2) NOT NULL,
`read` smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL,
`dateline` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`ip` varchar(15) NOT NULL,
`attachment` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`timestamp` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`username` varchar(300) NOT NULL,
`error` varchar(500) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `title` (`title`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=9010 ;
Edit 2
Edited structure with new indexes.
After putting an index on both messages.title and lastlogon.username I came up with these results:
Showing rows 0 - 29 (623 total, Query took 74.4938 sec)

Answer 1

First: replace the key on title, with a compound key on title + id
ALTER TABLE messages DROP INDEX title;
ALTER TABLE messages ADD INDEX title (title, id);
Now change the select to:
SELECT m.* FROM messages m
LEFT JOIN lastlogon l ON (l.username = m.title)
WHERE l.username IS NULL
-- GROUP BY m.id DESC -- faster replacement for distinct. I don't think you need this.
LIMIT 1000;
Or
SELECT m.* FROM messages m
WHERE m.title NOT IN (SELECT l.username FROM lastlogon l)
-- GROUP BY m.id DESC -- faster than distinct, I don't think you need it though.
LIMIT 1000;
Another problem with the slowness is the SELECT m.* part.
By selecting all column, you are forcing MySQL to do extra work.
Only select the columns you need:
SELECT m.title, m.name, m.email, ......
This will speed up the query as well.
There's another trick you can use:
Replace the limit 1000 with a cutoff date.
Step 1: Add an index on timestamp (or whatever field you want to use for the cutoff).
SELECT m.* FROM messages m
LEFT JOIN lastlogon l ON (l.username = m.title)
WHERE (m.id > (SELECT MIN(M2.ID) FROM messages m2 WHERE m2.timestamp >= '2011-09-01'))
AND l.username IS NULL
-- GROUP BY m.id DESC -- faster replacement for distinct. I don't think you need this.

Answer 2

I suggest you to add an index on messages.title . Then try to run again the query and test the performance.