How about using a trigger to call a stored procedure ? [ON INSERT to user_item_history DO ...]
and have your stored procedure count the records for that user and delete the oldest record if necessary... IF (SELECT COUNT(*) WHERE user_id = NEW.user_id) >= 50 THEN -- DELETE THE OLDEST RECORD.... END IF; RETURN NEW.* ""Jamie Tufnell"" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Hi, > > I have a table that stores per-user histories of recently viewed items > and I'd like to limit the amount of history items to <= 50 per user. > I'm considering doing this with a query run from cron every so often > but I'm not happy with what I've come up with so far, and since it's a > quite active table I thought I'd ask here to see if there's a more > efficient way. > > Right now the table structure is as follows... > > user_item_history: id (PK), user_id (FK), item_id (FK), timestamp > > For user_ids that have more than 50 rows, I want to keep the most > recent 50 and delete the rest. > > The most obvious way of doing this for me is: > > -- > -- Get the user_ids with 50 or more history entries like this > -- > SELECT user_id, count(*) > FROM user_scene_history > GROUP BY user_id > HAVING count(*) > 50; > > -- > -- Then iterate the ids above (_user_id) > -- > DELETE FROM user_scene_history > WHERE user_id = _user_id AND id NOT IN ( > SELECT id FROM user_scene_history > WHERE user_id = _user_id > ORDER BY timestamp DESC > LIMIT 50); > > I've left out the simple logic tying the above two queries together > for clarity.. > > I haven't actually tested this but while I assume it would work I > imagine there is a neater and possibly more efficient way of attacking > this. I'm also open to different approaches of limiting the user's > history too ... perhaps with table constraints so they can simply > never exceed 50 entries? But I'm not sure how to do this.. > > Any help would be greatly appreciated.. > > Thanks, > Jamie > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to > choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not > match > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings