Home/ Questions/Q 3279744
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-17T19:37:38+00:00

I am currently developing a an application to allow users to search through a

  • 0

I am currently developing a an application to allow users to search through a database of documents using various paramaters and returning a set of paged results. I am building it in PHP/MySQL, which is not my usual development platform, but its been grand so far.

The problem I am having is that in order to return a full set of results I have to use LEFT JOIN on every table, which completely destroys my performance. The person who developed the database has said that the query I am using will return the correct results, so thats what I have to use. The query is below, I am by no means an SQL Guru and could use some help on this.

I have been thinking that it might be better to split the query into sub-queries? Below is my current query:

    SELECT d.title, d.deposition_id, d.folio_start, d.folio_end, pl.place_id, p.surname, p.forename, p.person_type_id, pt.person_type_desc, p.age, d.manuscript_number, dt.day, dt.month, dt.year, plc.county_id, c.county_desc
 FROM deposition d 
 LEFT JOIN person AS p ON p.deposition_id = d.deposition_id 
 LEFT JOIN person_type AS pt ON p.person_type_id = pt.person_type_id 
 LEFT JOIN place_link AS pl ON pl.deposition_id = d.deposition_id 
 LEFT JOIN date AS dt ON dt.deposition_id = d.deposition_id 
 LEFT JOIN place AS plc ON pl.place_id = plc.place_id 
 LEFT JOIN county AS c ON plc.county_id = c.county_id
 WHERE 1 AND d.manuscript_number = '840' 
 GROUP BY d.deposition_id ORDER BY d.folio_start ASC
 LIMIT 0, 20

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Deposition Table:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `deposition` (
  `deposition_id` varchar(11) NOT NULL default '',
  `manuscript_number` int(10) NOT NULL default '0',
  `folio_start` varchar(4) NOT NULL default '0',
  `folio_end` varchar(4) default '0',
  `page` int(4) default NULL,
  `deposition_type_id` int(10) NOT NULL default '0',
  `comments` varchar(255) default '',
  `title` varchar(255) default NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`deposition_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Date Table

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `date` (
  `deposition_id` varchar(11) NOT NULL default '',
  `day` int(2) default NULL,
  `month` int(2) default NULL,
  `year` int(4) default NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`deposition_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Person_Type

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `person_type` (
  `person_type_id` int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `person_type_desc` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`person_type_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=59 ;
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The poor performance is almost certainly from lack of indexes. Your deposition table doesn’t have any indexes, and that probably means the other tables you’re referencing don’t have any either. You can start by adding an index to your deposition table. From the MySQL shell, or phpMyAdmin, issue the following query.

    ALTER TABLE deposition ADD INDEX(deposition_id, manuscript_number);

    You know you’re on the right track if the query executes faster after adding the index. From there you might want to put indexes on the other tables on the referenced columns. For instance for this part of your query “LEFT JOIN person AS p ON p.deposition_id = d.deposition_id”, you could try adding an index to the person table using.

    ALTER TABLE person ADD INDEX(deposition_id);

    • 0