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Asked: 2026-05-20T15:07:16+00:00

EDIT: When I remove the index on the column that I’m searching in, the

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EDIT: When I remove the index on the column that I’m searching in, the response time goes from around 2.5 to around 2.6 sec. Should the difference not be a hell of lot more?

I’m writing a small application that uses a jquery autosuggest plugin. The user starts typing the name of his home town and my code queries a table of 2.7 million rows containing city names (maxmind city database) with AJAX. I set an index on the db column being searched (city_name).

When I run the following query (using CodeIgniter Active Record) CI’s benchmark class reports 2.1922 sec (for that query only, so this does not include html page load times).

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE city_name
LIKE “%bang%”

When I run the same query in phpmyadmin I get: Query took 0.0068 sec

When I run

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE city_name
LIKE “%bangkok%”

CI’s benchmark class reports 2.1951 sec. When I run this same query in phpmyadmin I get: Query took 2.1811 sec.

So while CI’s response times are almost identical for both queries, the ones run in phpmyadmin are vastly different.

Questions

  • Obviously querying 2.7 million rows will be relatively slow, but is there any way I get can decent response times for such an auto suggest functionality? 2.5 sec is way too slow. AFAIK there is no fast way to search with a “LIKE” syntax in a PHP array containing all 2.7 million rows. Would memcache be an option?

  • Why are the response time differences negligible when using CI Active Record, but so vastly different in phpmyadmin?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can get significant benefit (at least 100 times faster) by indexing the column you are searching for.

    Take a look at 7.3.1. How MySQL Uses Indexes.

    EDIT

    Either phpmyadmin and your benchmark tool are running on the same machine? Phpmyadmin is supposed to run on the same machine than the database, but the benchmark tool could not. In the time measuring, the benchmark tool might probably take into account the network time overload (not the html rendering page).

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