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Asked: 2026-05-13T19:57:38+00:00

I’m trying to speed up my SELECT queries in my web application. I have

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I’m trying to speed up my SELECT queries in my web application. I have done some pretty major optimizations, like ordering the rows returned by PHP rather than MySQL itself. Now I’m just wondering, is it faster to use the SELECT statement on columns that are a primary key?

Example, I have a table set up with the columns settingKey and settingValue, which I am using for my configuration. Would it be faster to grab the contents of settingValue when settingKey is a primary index, with a statement like this?

SELECT settingValue FROM config WHERE settingKey="MasterPassword"

I have tried Google’ing for the answer but came to no clear answer.

Thanks. 🙂

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Yes, in cases where you select a single row from a large table, an primary key will almost certainly improve performance. This is because it will create an index on the table, which can be used to find the required row more efficiently than doing a full table scan.

    Also, it will enforce uniqueness in your settingKey values.

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