MySQL - How do I efficiently get the row with the lowest ID? - mysql

Is there a faster way to update the oldest row of a MySQL table that matches a certain condition than using ORDER BY id LIMIT 1 as in the following query?
UPDATE mytable SET field1 = '1' WHERE field1 = 0 ORDER BY id LIMIT 1;
Note:
Assume the primary key is id and there is also a index on field1.
We are updating a single row.
We are not updating strictly the oldest row, we are updating the oldest row that matches a condition.
We want to update the oldest matching row, i.e the lowest id, i.e. the head of the FIFO queue.
Questions:
Is the ORDER BY id necessary? How does MySQL order by default?
Real world example
We have a DB table being used for a email queue. Rows are added when we want to queue emails to send to our users. Rows are removed by a cron job, run each minute, processing as many as possible in that minute and sending 1 email per row.
We plan to ditch this approach and use something like Gearman or Resque to process our email queue. But in the meantime I have a question on how we can efficiently mark the oldest item of the queue for processing, a.k.a. The row with the lowest ID. This query does the job:
mysql_query("UPDATE email_queue SET processingID = '1' WHERE processingID = 0 ORDER BY id LIMIT 1");
However, it is appearing in the mysql slow log a lot due to scaling issues. The query can take more than 10s when the table has 500,000 rows. The problem is that this table has grown massively since it was first introduced and now sometimes has half a million rows and a overhead of 133.9 MiB. For example we INSERT 6000 new rows perhaps 180 times a day and DELETE roughly the same number.
To stop the query appearing in the slow log we removed the ORDER BY id to stop a massive sort of the whole table. i.e.
mysql_query("UPDATE email_queue SET processingID = '1' WHERE processingID = 0 LIMIT 1");
... but the new query no longer always gets the row with the lowest id (although it often does). Is there a more efficient way of getting the row with the lowest id other than using ORDER BY id ?
For reference, this is the structure of the email queue table:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `email_queue` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`time_queued` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP COMMENT 'Time when item was queued',
`mem_id` int(10) NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(150) NOT NULL,
`processingID` int(2) NOT NULL COMMENT 'Indicate if row is being processed',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `processingID` (`processingID`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Give this a read:
ORDER BY … LIMIT Performance Optimization

sounds like you have other processes locking the table preventing your update completing in a timely manner - have you considered using innodb ?

I think the 'slow part' comes from
WHERE processingID = 0
It's slow because it's not indexed. But, indexing this column (IMHO) seems incorrect too.
The idea is to change above query to something like :
WHERE id = 0
Which theoretically will be faster since it uses index.
How about creating another table which contains ids of rows which hasn't been processed? Hence the insertion works twice. First to insert to the real table and the second is to insert id into 'table of hasn't processed'. The processing part too, needs to double its duty. First to retrieve an id from 'table of hasn't been processed' then delete it. The second job of processing part is to process of course.
Of course, the id column in 'table of hasn't been processed' needs to index its content. Just to ensure that selecting and deleting will be faster.

This question is old, but for reference for anyone ending up here:
You have a condition on processingID (WHERE processingID = 0), and within that constraint you want to order by ID.
What's happening with your current query is that it scans the table from the lowest ID to the greatest, stopping when it finds 1 record matching the condition. Presumably, it will first find a ton of old records, scanning almost the entire table until it finds an unprocessed one near the end.
How do we improve this?
Consider that you have an index on processingID. Technically, the primary key is always appended (which is how the index can "point" to anything in the first place). So you really have an index on processingID, id. That means ordering on that will be fast.
Change your ordering to: ORDER BY processingID, id
Since you have fixed processingID to a single value with you WHERE clause, this does not change the resulting order. However, it does make it easy for the database to apply both your condition and your ordering, without scanning any records that do not match.

One funny thing is that MySQL, by default, returns rows orderd by ID, instead in a casual way as stated in the relational theory (I am not sure if this behaviour is changed in the latest versions). So, the last row you get from a select should be the last inserted row. I would not use this way, of course.
As you said, the best solution is to use something like Resque, or RabbitMQ & co.
You could use an in-memory table, that is volatile, but much faster, than store, there the latest ID, or just use a my_isam table to add persistency. It is simple and fast in performance and it takes a little bit to implement.

Related

Mysql Update one column of multiple rows in one query

I've looked over all of the related questions i've find, but couldn't get one which will answer mine.
i got a table like this:
id | name | age | active | ...... | ... |
where "id" is the primary key, and the ... meaning there are something like 30 columns.
the "active" column is of tinyint type.
My task:
Update ids 1,4,12,55,111 (those are just an example, it can be 1000 different id in total) with active = 1 in a single query.
I did:
UPDATE table SET active = 1 WHERE id IN (1,4,12,55,111)
its inside a transaction, cause i'm updating something else in this process.
the engine is InnoDB
My problem:
Someone told me that doing such a query is equivalent to 5 queries at execution, cause the IN will translate to the a given number of OR, and run them one after another.
eventually, instead of 1 i get N which is the number in the IN.
he suggests to create a temp table, insert all the new values in it, and then update by join.
Does he right? both of the equivalency and performance.
What do you suggest? i've thought INSERT INTO .. ON DUPLICATE UPDATE will help but i don't have all the data for the row, only it id, and that i want to set active = 1 on it.
Maybe this query is better?
UPDATE table SET
active = CASE
WHEN id='1' THEN '1'
WHEN id='4' THEN '1'
WHEN id='12' THEN '1'
WHEN id='55' THEN '1'
WHEN id='111' THEN '1'
ELSE active END
WHERE campaign_id > 0; //otherwise it throws an error about updating without where clause in safe mode, and i don't know if i could toggle safe mode off.
Thanks.
It's the other way around. OR can sometimes be turned into IN. IN is then efficiently executed, especially if there is an index on the column. If you have 1000 entries in the IN, it will do 1000 probes into the table based on id.
If you are running a new enough version of MySQL, I think you can do EXPLAIN EXTENDED UPDATE ...OR...; SHOW WARNINGS; to see this conversion;
The UPDATE CASE... will probably tediously check each and every row.
It would probably be better on other users of the system if you broke the UPDATE up into multiple UPDATEs, each having 100-1000 rows. More on chunking .
Where did you get the ids in the first place? If it was via a SELECT, then perhaps it would be practical to combine it with the UPDATE to make it one step instead of two.
I think below is better because it uses primary key.
UPDATE table SET active = 1 WHERE id<=5

SELECT ... FOR UPDATE from one table in multiple threads

I need a little help with SELECT FOR UPDATE (resp. LOCK IN SHARE MODE).
I have a table with around 400 000 records and I need to run two different processing functions on each row.
The table structure is appropriately this:
data (
`id`,
`mtime`, -- When was data1 set last
`data1`,
`data2` DEFAULT NULL,
`priority1`,
`priority2`,
PRIMARY KEY `id`,
INDEX (`mtime`),
FOREIGN KEY ON `data2`
)
Functions are a little different:
first function - has to run in loop on all records (is pretty fast), should select records based on priority1; sets data1 and mtime
second function - has to run only once on each records (is pretty slow), should select records based on priority2; sets data1 and mtime
They shouldn't modify the same row at the same time, but the select may return one row in both of them (priority1 and priority2 have different values) and it's okay for transaction to wait if that's the case (and I'd expect that this would be the only case when it'll block).
I'm selecting data based on following queries:
-- For the first function - not processed first, then the oldest,
-- the same age goes based on priority
SELECT id FROM data ORDER BY mtime IS NULL DESC, mtime, priority1 LIMIT 250 FOR UPDATE;
-- For the second function - only processed not processed order by priority
SELECT if FROM data ORDER BY priority2 WHERE data2 IS NULL LIMIT 50 FOR UPDATE;
But what I am experiencing is that every time only one query returns at the time.
So my questions are:
Is it possible to acquire two separate locks in two separate transactions on separate bunch of rows (in the same table)?
Do I have that many collisions between first and second query (I have troubles debugging that, any hint on how to debug SELECT ... FROM (SELECT ...) WHERE ... IN (SELECT) would be appreciated )?
Can ORDER BY ... LIMIT ... cause any issues?
Can indexes and keys cause any issues?
Key things to check for before getting much further:
Ensure the table engine is InnoDB, otherwise "for update" isn't going to lock the row, as there will be no transactions.
Make sure you're using the "for update" feature correctly. If you select something for update, it's locked to that transaction. While other transactions may be able to read the row, it can't be selected for update, updated or deleted by any other transaction until the lock is released by the original locking transaction.
To keep things clean, try explicitly starting a transaction using "START TRANSACTION", run your select "for update", do whatever you're going to do to the records that are returned, and finish up by explicitly executing a "COMMIT" to close out the transaction.
Order and limit will have no impact on the issue you're experiencing as far as I can tell, whatever was going to be returned by the Select will be the rows that get locked.
To answer your questions:
Is it possible to acquire two separate locks in two separate transactions on separate bunch of rows (in the same table)?
Yes, but not on the same rows. Locks can only exist at the row level in one transaction at a time.
Do I have that many collisions between first and second query (I have troubles debugging that, any hint on how to debug SELECT ... FROM (SELECT ...) WHERE ... IN (SELECT) would be appreciated )?
There could be a short period where the row lock is being calculated, which will delay the second query, however unless you're running many hundreds of these select for updates at once, it shouldn't cause you any significant or noticable delays.
Can ORDER BY ... LIMIT ... cause any issues?
Not in my experience. They should work just as they always would on a normal select statement.
Can indexes and keys cause any issues?
Indexes should exist as always to ensure sufficient performance, but they shouldn't cause any issues with obtaining a lock.
All points in accepted answer seem fine except below 2 points:
"whatever was going to be returned by the Select will be the rows that get locked." &
"Can indexes and keys cause any issues?
but they shouldn't cause any issues with obtaining a lock."
Instead all the rows which are internally read by DB during deciding which rows to select and return will be locked. For example below query will lock all rows of the table but might select and return only few rows:
select * from table where non_primary_non_indexed_column = ? for update
Since there is no index, DB will have to read the entire table to search for your desired row and hence lock entire table.
If you want to lock only one row either you need to specify its primary key or an indexed column in the where clause. Thus indexing becomes very important in case of locking only the appropriate rows.
This is a good reference - https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/innodb-locking-reads.html

How do I reset sequence numbers to become consecutive?

I've got a mysql table where each row has its own sequence number in a "sequence" column. However, when a row gets deleted, it leaves a gap. So...
1
2
3
4
...becomes...
1
2
4
Is there a neat way to "reset" the sequencing, so it becomes consecutive again in one SQL query?
Incidentally, I'm sure there is a technical term for this process. Anyone?
UPDATED: The "sequence" column is not a primary key. It is only used for determining the order that records are displayed within the app.
If the field is your primary key...
...then, as stated elsewhere on this question, you shouldn't be changing IDs. The IDs are already unique and you neither need nor want to re-use them.
Now, that said...
Otherwise...
It's quite possible that you have a different field (that is, as well as the PK) for some application-defined ordering. As long as this ordering isn't inherent in some other field (e.g. if it's user-defined), then there is nothing wrong with this.
You could recreate the table using a (temporary) auto_increment field and then remove the auto_increment afterwards.
I'd be tempted to UPDATE in ascending order and apply an incrementing variable.
SET #i = 0;
UPDATE `table`
SET `myOrderCol` = #i:=#i+1
ORDER BY `myOrderCol` ASC;
(Query not tested.)
It does seem quite wasteful to do this every time you delete items, but unfortunately with this manual ordering approach there's not a whole lot you can do about that if you want to maintain the integrity of the column.
You could possibly reduce the load, such that after deleting the entry with myOrderCol equal to, say, 5:
SET #i = 5;
UPDATE `table`
SET `myOrderCol` = #i:=#i+1
WHERE `myOrderCol` > 5
ORDER BY `myOrderCol` ASC;
(Query not tested.)
This will "shuffle" all the following values down by one.
I'd say don't bother. Reassigning sequential values is a relatively expensive operation and if the column value is for ordering purpose only there is no good reason to do that. The only concern you might have is if for example your column is UNSIGNED INT and you suspect that in the lifetime of your application you might have more than 4,294,967,296 rows (including deleted rows) and go out of range, even if that is your concern you can do the reassigning as a one time task 10 years later when that happens.
This is a question that often I read here and in other forums. As already written by zerkms this is a false problem. Moreover if your table is related with other ones you'll lose relations.
Just for learning purpose a simple way is to store your data in a temporary table, truncate the original one (this reset auto_increment) and than repopulate it.
Silly example:
create table seq (
id int not null auto_increment primary key,
col char(1)
) engine = myisam;
insert into seq (col) values ('a'),('b'),('c'),('d');
delete from seq where id = 3;
create temporary table tmp select col from seq order by id;
truncate seq;
insert into seq (col) select * from tmp;
but it's totally useless. ;)
If this is your PK then you shouldn't change it. PKs should be (mostly) unchanging columns. If you were to change them then not only would you need to change it in that table but also in any foreign keys where is exists.
If you do need a sequential sequence then ask yourself why. In a table there is no inherent or guaranteed order (even in the PK, although it may turn out that way because of how most RDBMSs store and retrieve the data). That's why we have the ORDER BY clause in SQL. If you want to be able to generate sequential numbers based on something else (time added into the database, etc.) then consider generating that either in your query or with your front end.
Assuming that this is an ID field, you can do this when you insert:
INSERT INTO yourTable (ID)
SELECT MIN(ID)
FROM yourTable
WHERE ID > 1
As others have mentioned I don't recommend doing this. It will hold a table lock while the next ID is evaluated.

SELECT vs UPDATE performance with index

If I SELECT IDs then UPDATE using those IDs, then the UPDATE query is faster than if I would UPDATE using the conditions in the SELECT.
To illustrate:
SELECT id FROM table WHERE a IS NULL LIMIT 10; -- 0.00 sec
UPDATE table SET field = value WHERE id IN (...); -- 0.01 sec
The above is about 100 times faster than an UPDATE with the same conditions:
UPDATE table SET field = value WHERE a IS NULL LIMIT 10; -- 0.91 sec
Why?
Note: the a column is indexed.
Most likely the second UPDATE statement locks much more rows, while the first one uses unique key and locks only the rows it's going to update.
The two queries are not identical. You only know that the IDs are unique in the table.
UPDATE ... LIMIT 10 will update at most 10 records.
UPDATE ... WHERE id IN (SELECT ... LIMIT 10) may update more than 10 records if there are duplicate ids.
I don't think there can be a one straight-forward answer to your "why?" without doing some sort of analysis and research.
The SELECT queries are normally cached, which means that if you run the same SELECT query multiple times, the execution time of the first query is normally greater than the following queries. Please note that this behavior can only be experienced where the SELECT is heavy and not in scenarios where even the first SELECT is much faster. So, in your example it might be that the SELECT took 0.00s because of the caching. The UPDATE queries are using different WHERE clauses and hence it is likely that their execution times are different.
Though the column a is indexed, but it is not necessary that MySQL must be using the index when doing the SELECT or the UPDATE. Please study the EXPLAIN outputs. Also, see the output of SHOW INDEX and check if the "Comment" column reads "disabled" for any indexes? You may read more here - http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/show-index.html and http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-indexes.html.
Also, if we ignore the SELECT for a while and focus only on the UPDATE queries, it is obvious that they aren't both using the same WHERE condition - the first one runs on id column and the latter on a. Though both columns are indexed but it does not necessarily mean that all the table indexes perform alike. It is possible that some index is more efficient than the other depending on the size of the index or the datatype of the indexed column or if it is a single- or multiple-column index. There sure might be other reasons but I ain't an expert on it.
Also, I think that the second UPDATE is doing more work in the sense that it might be putting more row-level locks compared to the first UPDATE. It is true that both UPDATES are finally updating the same number of rows. But where in the first update, it is 10 rows that are locked, I think in the second UPDATE, all rows with a as NULL (which is more than 10) are locked before doing the UPDATE. Perhaps MySQL first applies the locking and then runs the LIMIT clause to update only limited records.
Hope the above explanation makes sense!
Do you have a composite index or separate indexes?
If it is a composite index of id and a columns,
In 2nd update statement the a column's index would not be used. The reason is that only the left most prefix indexes are used (unless if a is the PRIMARY KEY)
So if you want the a column's index to be used, you need in include id in your WHERE clause as well, with id first then a.
Also it depends on what storage engine you are using since MySQL does indexes at the engine level, not server.
You can try this:
UPDATE table SET field = value WHERE id IN (...) AND a IS NULL LIMIT 10;
By doing this id is in the left most index followed by a
Also from your comments, the lookups are much faster because if you are using InnoDB, updating columns would mean that the InnoDB storage engine would have to move indexes to a different page node, or have to split a page if the page is already full, since InnoDB stores indexes in sequential order. This process is VERY slow and expensive, and gets even slower if your indexes are fragmented, or if your table is very big
The comment by Michael J.V is the best description. This answer assumes a is a column that is not indexed and 'id' is.
The WHERE clause in the first UPDATE command is working off the primary key of the table, id
The WHERE clause in the second UPDATE command is working off a non-indexed column. This makes the finding of the columns to be updated significantly slower.
Never underestimate the power of indexes. A table will perform better if the indexes are used correctly than a table a tenth the size with no indexing.
Regarding "MySQL doesn't support updating the same table you're selecting from"
UPDATE table SET field = value
WHERE id IN (SELECT id FROM table WHERE a IS NULL LIMIT 10);
Just do this:
UPDATE table SET field = value
WHERE id IN (select id from (SELECT id FROM table WHERE a IS NULL LIMIT 10));
The accepted answer seems right but is incomplete, there are major differences.
As much as I understand, and I'm not a SQL expert:
The first query you SELECT N rows and UPDATE them using the primary key.
That's very fast as you have a direct access to all rows based on the fastest possible index.
The second query you UPDATE N rows using LIMIT
That will lock all rows and release again after the update is finished.
The big difference is that you have a RACE CONDITION in case 1) and an atomic UPDATE in case 2)
If you have two or more simultanous calls of the case 1) query you'll have the situation that you select the SAME id's from the table.
Both calls will update the same IDs simultanously, overwriting each other.
This is called "race condition".
The second case is avoiding that issue, mysql will lock all rows during the update.
If a second session is doing the same command it will have a wait time until the rows are unlocked.
So no race condition is possible at the expense of lost time.

Truncating MEMORY table, and locking

I use a 1 column memory table to keep track of views on various items in my DB. Each view = INSERT query into the memory table. Every 10 mins, I wanna count() the rows for each item, and commit changes to DB.
The question is.... if I run the query that will get the list of all items, such as
SELECT COUNT(*) AS period_views, `item_id` FROM `-views` GROUP BY `item_id` ORDER BY `item_id`
and then run an update query for each row to add the amount of views in that period, and then truncate the table. This operation might take a few seconds.... and in those few seconds, there is going to be other INSERTS into that table, that didnt make it into the original count. Will they be truncated too once that command executes? or will the table be locked until the entire operation completes, and the the new INSERTs added?
MySQL does not lock the table automatically, and it is possible that you will lose some records in between getting the count and performing the truncate. So two solutions jump out at me:
1) Use table locks to prevent the memory table being updated - depending on the nature of your application, this means that all of your clients might freeze for a few seconds while you are updating, this might be OK.
2) Add a second column to keep track of which records you are currently updating ...
ALTER TABLE `-views` ADD work_in_progress TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;
And then when you want to work on the those records
UPDATE `-views` SET work_in_progress = 1;
SELECT COUNT(*) AS period_views, `item_id` FROM `-views` WHERE work_in_progress GROUP BY `item_id` ORDER BY `item_id`;
# [ perform updates as necessary ]
DELETE FROM `-views` WHERE work_in_progress;
This implementation will guarantee that you don't delete any -views which were added while you were updating.
And FWIW, -views is an awful name for a table!