Question

I have a MySQL 5.0 database with a few tables containing over 50M rows. But how do I know this? By running “SELECT COUNT(1) FROM foo”, of course. This query on one table containing 58.8M rows took 10 minutes to complete!

mysql> SELECT COUNT(1) FROM large_table;
+----------+
| count(1) |
+----------+
| 58778494 | 
+----------+
1 row in set (10 min 23.88 sec)

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT COUNT(1) FROM large_table;
+----+-------------+-------------------+-------+---------------+----------------------------------------+---------+------+-----------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table             | type  | possible_keys | key                                    | key_len | ref  | rows      | Extra       |
+----+-------------+-------------------+-------+---------------+----------------------------------------+---------+------+-----------+-------------+
|  1 | SIMPLE      | large_table       | index | NULL          | fk_large_table_other_table_id          | 5       | NULL | 167567567 | Using index | 
+----+-------------+-------------------+-------+---------------+----------------------------------------+---------+------+-----------+-------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> DESC large_table;
+-------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field             | Type                | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+-------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id                | bigint(20) unsigned | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment | 
| created_on        | datetime            | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| updated_on        | datetime            | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| other_table_id    | int(11)             | YES  | MUL | NULL    |                | 
| parent_id         | bigint(20) unsigned | YES  | MUL | NULL    |                | 
| name              | varchar(255)        | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
| property_type     | varchar(64)         | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
+-------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

All of the tables in question are InnoDB.

Any ideas why this is so slow, and how I can speed it up?

Answer 1

If you need to have the result instantly and you don’t care if it’s 58.8M or 51.7M, you can find out the approximate number of rows by calling

show table status like 'large_table';

See the column rows
For more information about the result take a look at the manual at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/show-table-status.html