Question

I have what I’d thought would be a simple query, but it takes ‘forever’. I’m not great with SQL optimizations, so I thought I could ask you guys.

Here’s the query, with EXPLAIN:

EXPLAIN SELECT *
    FROM `firms_firmphonenumber`
    INNER JOIN `firms_location` ON (
        `firms_firmphonenumber`.`location_id` = `firms_location`.`id`
    )
    ORDER BY
         `firms_location`.`name_en` ASC,
         `firms_firmphonenumber`.`location_id` ASC LIMIT 100;

Result:

id, select_type,       table,           type,  possible_keys,                     key,                           key_len, ref, rows, Extra
1,  'SIMPLE',     'firms_location',    'ALL',  'PRIMARY',                        '',                            '',             '', 73030, 'Using temporary; Using filesort'
1,  'SIMPLE', 'firms_firmphonenumber', 'ref', 'firms_firmphonenumber_firm_id', 'firms_firmphonenumber_firm_id', '4', 'citiadmin.firms_location.id', 1, ''

Keys on firms_location:

Keyname                 Type    Unique  Packed  Field   Cardinality
PRIMARY                    BTREE    Yes     No      id      65818
firms_location_name_en     BTREE    No      No      name_en 65818

Keys on firms_firmphonenumber:

Keyname                     Type  Unique Packed  Field       Cardinality
PRIMARY                         BTREE Yes    No      id          85088
firms_firmphonenumber_firm_id   BTREE No     No      location_id 85088

It seems (to me) that mySQL refuses to use the firms_location table’s primary key – but I have no idea why.

Any help would be much appreciated.

---

Edit after solution posted

With the altered order by:

EXPLAIN SELECT *
    FROM `firms_firmphonenumber`
    INNER JOIN `firms_location` ON (
        `firms_firmphonenumber`.`location_id` = `firms_location`.`id`
    )
    ORDER BY
         `firms_location`.`name_en` ASC,
         `firms_location`.id ASC LIMIT 100;
         #`firms_firmphonenumber`.`location_id` ASC LIMIT 100;

Result:

"id","select_type","table","type","possible_keys","key","key_len","ref","rows","Extra"
1,"SIMPLE","firms_location","index","PRIMARY","firms_location_name_en","767","",100,""
1,"SIMPLE","firms_firmphonenumber","ref","firms_firmphonenumber_firm_id","firms_firmphonenumber_firm_id","4","citiadmin.firms_location.id",1,""

Why did it decide to use these now? mySQL makes some odd choices… Any insight would help again 🙂

---

Edit with detail from django

Originally, I had these (abbreviated) models:

class Location(models.Model):
    id = models.AutoField(primary_key=True)
    name_en = models.CharField(max_length=255, db_index=True)
    class Meta:
        ordering = ("name_en", "id")

class FirmPhoneNumber(models.Model):
    location = models.ForeignKey(Location, db_index=True)
    number = PhoneNumberField(db_index=True)
    class Meta:
        ordering = ("location", "number")

Changing the Locaion’s class’s Meta.ordering field to ("name_en", ) fixed the query to not have the spurious order by.

Answer 1

These things tend to be by trial and error, but try ordering on firms_location.id rather than firms_firmphonenumber.location_id. They are the same value, but MySQL may then pick up on the index.