Question

Running the below select on a MySql table containing 1500000 rows will take approximately 5 mins 30 seconds.

SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE timestamp BETWEEN UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:02') AND  UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:03')

[Executed: 25/01/10 5:32:47 EST PM ] [Execution: 231094/ms] 

Converting and replacing the values returned by UNIX_TIMESTAMP function in the above query will dramatically reduce the duration :

SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:02'),  UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:03')

UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:02')     UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:03')    
----------------------------------------  ---------------------------------------- 
1208911022                                1208911023                               


SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE timestamp BETWEEN 1208911022 AND 1208911023

[Executed: 25/01/10 5:58:27 EST PM ] [Execution: 11875/ms] 

The type of the timestamp column is INT(11).

We are not discussing indexing here – I am not the owner of the database but I will ask for an index on that column.

I want to ask you why the huge duration diff between the two queries ?

It seems that every INT(11) value from timestamp column is converted to the type of the value returned by UNIX_TIMESTAMP !

UPDATE 1

---

MySql version :

SELECT VERSION()

5.1.23-rc-log

Explain results :

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE timestamp BETWEEN UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:02') AND  UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:03')

 id     select_type     table          type     possible_keys     key     key_len     ref     rows      Extra       
 -----  --------------  -------------  -------  ----------------  ------  ----------  ------  --------  ----------- 
 1      SIMPLE          my_table       ALL      (null)            (null)  (null)      (null)  15046061  Using where 

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE timestamp BETWEEN 1208911022 AND 1208911023

 id     select_type     table          type     possible_keys     key     key_len     ref     rows      Extra       
 -----  --------------  -------------  -------  ----------------  ------  ----------  ------  --------  ----------- 
 1      SIMPLE          my_table       ALL      (null)            (null)  (null)      (null)  15046061  Using where 

UPDATE 2

---

SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE timestamp >= UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:02') AND timestamp <= UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:03')

 [Executed: 26/01/10 10:29:52 EST AM ] [Execution: 264172/ms] 

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE timestamp >= UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:02') AND timestamp <= UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:03')

 id     select_type     table          type     possible_keys     key     key_len     ref     rows      Extra       
 -----  --------------  -------------  -------  ----------------  ------  ----------  ------  --------  ----------- 
 1      SIMPLE          my_table       ALL      (null)            (null)  (null)      (null)  15046061  Using where 

Seems that >= and <= is not making any difference – runtime is over 5 mins!

Answer 1

I ran these two queries using MySQL’s BENCHMARK() function:

mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(15000000, 1208911022 BETWEEN 
UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:02') AND  UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2008-04-23 01:37:03'));
1 row in set (33.28 sec)

mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(15000000, 1208911022 BETWEEN 1208911022 AND 1208911023);
1 row in set (0.52 sec)

It appears that MySQL isn’t smart enough to factor out UNIX_TIMESTAMP() expressions, even though they should be constant. MySQL evaluates the functions during each iteration of the expression. So using this function was about 64 times slower in this test.

I’m running MySQL 5.1.41 on a Macbook 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.

I suggest that you convert the timestamps to their integer values before preparing the query.