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Asked: 2026-05-10T15:19:15+00:00

Is it particularly bad to have a very, very large SQL query with lots

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Is it particularly bad to have a very, very large SQL query with lots of (potentially redundant) WHERE clauses?

For example, here’s a query I’ve generated from my web application with everything turned off, which should be the largest possible query for this program to generate:

SELECT *  FROM 4e_magic_items  INNER JOIN 4e_magic_item_levels    ON 4e_magic_items.id = 4e_magic_item_levels.itemid  INNER JOIN 4e_monster_sources    ON 4e_magic_items.source = 4e_monster_sources.id  WHERE (itemlevel BETWEEN 1 AND 30)     AND source!=16 AND source!=2 AND source!=5    AND source!=13 AND source!=15 AND source!=3    AND source!=4 AND source!=12 AND source!=7    AND source!=14 AND source!=11 AND source!=10    AND source!=8 AND source!=1 AND source!=6    AND source!=9  AND type!='Arms' AND type!='Feet'    AND type!='Hands' AND type!='Head'    AND type!='Neck' AND type!='Orb'    AND type!='Potion' AND type!='Ring'    AND type!='Rod' AND type!='Staff'    AND type!='Symbol' AND type!='Waist'    AND type!='Wand' AND type!='Wondrous Item'    AND type!='Alchemical Item' AND type!='Elixir'    AND type!='Reagent' AND type!='Whetstone'    AND type!='Other Consumable' AND type!='Companion'    AND type!='Mount' AND (type!='Armor' OR (false ))    AND (type!='Weapon' OR (false ))   ORDER BY type ASC, itemlevel ASC, name ASC

It seems to work well enough, but it’s also not particularly high traffic (a few hundred hits a day or so), and I wonder if it would be worth the effort to try and optimize the queries to remove redundancies and such.

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1 Answer

  1. Reading your query makes me want to play an RPG.

    This is definitely not too long. As long as they are well formatted, I’d say a practical limit is about 100 lines. After that, you’re better off breaking subqueries into views just to keep your eyes from crossing.

    I’ve worked with some queries that are 1000+ lines, and that’s hard to debug.

    By the way, may I suggest a reformatted version? This is mostly to demonstrate the importance of formatting; I trust this will be easier to understand.

    select *   from   4e_magic_items mi  ,4e_magic_item_levels mil  ,4e_monster_sources ms where mi.id = mil.itemid   and mi.source = ms.id   and itemlevel between 1 and 30   and source not in(16,2,5,13,15,3,4,12,7,14,11,10,8,1,6,9)     and type not in(                   'Arms' ,'Feet' ,'Hands' ,'Head' ,'Neck' ,'Orb' ,                   'Potion' ,'Ring' ,'Rod' ,'Staff' ,'Symbol' ,'Waist' ,                   'Wand' ,'Wondrous Item' ,'Alchemical Item' ,'Elixir' ,                   'Reagent' ,'Whetstone' ,'Other Consumable' ,'Companion' ,                   'Mount'                  )   and ((type != 'Armor') or (false))   and ((type != 'Weapon') or (false)) order by   type asc  ,itemlevel asc  ,name asc  /* Some thoughts: ============== 0 - Formatting really matters, in SQL even more than most languages. 1 - consider selecting only the columns you need, not '*' 2 - use of table aliases makes it short & clear ('MI', 'MIL' in my example) 3 - joins in the WHERE clause will un-clutter your FROM clause 4 - use NOT IN for long lists 5 - logically, the last two lines can be added to the 'type not in' section.     I'm not sure why you have the 'or false', but I'll assume some good reason     and leave them here. */
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