Thanks Gavin and Joerg, that was very helpful!
-- Jonas
On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Joerg Bruehe <joerg.bru...@oracle.com>wrote:
> Hi Neil, all!
>
>
> Tompkins Neil wrote:
> > So if you have individual indexes for example field_1, field_2 and
> field_3
> > etc and then perform a search like
> >
> > WHERE field_1 = 10
> > AND field_3 = 'abc'
> >
> > This wouldn't improve the search ? You have to create a index for all
> > possible combined field searches ?
>
> No - you didn't read Gavin's mail exact enough:
>
> > On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 9:35 PM, Gavin Towey <gto...@ffn.com> wrote:
> >
> >> [[...]]
> >>
> >> Additionally indexes are always read left to right. So an index on
> >> ('user_id', 'product_id') will help when doing WHERE user_id=N AND
> >> product_id IN (1,2,3), but wouldn't help for just the condtion on
> >> product_id.
>
> What Gavin calls "left to right" is what I call "most significant
> first", the result is the same:
>
> In a multi-column index, the columns are listed in the order of their
> significance. Any DBMS (this is not limited to MySQL) can use such an
> index only if a condition for the first (= most significant) field(s) is
> (are) specified.
>
> Example: Assume the index is on fields A, B, and C in that order.
>
> A statement "... where A = x and B = y and C = z" can use the index.
> A statement "... where A = x and B = y" can use the index, limited to
> the first two fields.
> A statement "... where A = x" can use the index. the first field only.
> A statement "... where A = x and C = z" can also use the index for A,
> but will have to evaluate the condition on C by scanning all records
> matching A.
>
> A statement "... where B = y and C = z" cannot use the index, because
> there is no condition on A.
>
> If there are many searches based on A and C only (not B), and there are
> many records matching A with different values of C, then an additional
> index on these two columns may be helpful.
>
> Compare the index with a phone book, which (typically) lists the entries
> sorted by last name (most significant), then first name, then ... :
> If you don't know the last name, you cannot profit from the sorting and
> have to scan the wole book.
>
> >>
> >> See the manual for full details on how mysql uses indexes:
> >> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-indexes.html
>
> HTH,
> Jörg
>
> --
> Joerg Bruehe, MySQL Build Team, joerg.bru...@oracle.com
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