Question

This is the whole query…

SELECT s.*, (SELECT url FROM show_medias WHERE show_id = s.id AND is_primary = 1) AS media_url
FROM (shows As s)
WHERE `s`.`id` IN (
 SELECT DISTINCT st.show_id
 FROM show_time_schedules AS sts
 LEFT JOIN show_times AS st ON st.id = sts.show_time_id
 WHERE sts.schedule_date BETWEEN CAST('2012-01-10' AS date) AND CAST('2012-01-14' AS date)
 )
AND `s`.`is_active` = 1
ORDER BY s.name asc 

If…

SELECT url FROM show_medias WHERE show_id = s.id AND is_primary = 1
(0.0004 sec)

And…

 SELECT DISTINCT st.show_id
 FROM show_time_schedules AS sts
 LEFT JOIN show_times AS st ON st.id = sts.show_time_id
 WHERE sts.schedule_date BETWEEN CAST('2012-01-10' AS date) AND CAST('2012-01-14' AS date)
(0.0061 sec)

Is there an obvious reason….

SELECT s.*, (inner query 1) AS media_url
FROM (shows As s)
WHERE `s`.`id` IN ( inner query 2 )
AND `s`.`is_active` = 1
ORDER BY s.name asc

is taking 5.7245 sec?

EXPLAIN EXTENDED

id  select_type         table       type    possible_keys   key     key_len ref                     rows    filtered    Extra
1   PRIMARY             s           ALL     NULL            NULL    NULL    NULL                    151     100.00      Using where; Using filesort
3   DEPENDENT SUBQUERY  sts         ALL     NULL            NULL    NULL    NULL                    26290   100.00      Using where; Using temporary
3   DEPENDENT SUBQUERY  st          eq_ref  PRIMARY         PRIMARY 4       bvcdb.sts.show_time_id  1       100.00      Using where
2   DEPENDENT SUBQUERY  show_medias ALL     NULL            NULL    NULL    NULL                    159     100.00      Using where

Answer 1

You can always use EXPLAIN or EXPLAIN EXTENDED to see what MySql is doing with a query

You could also write your query a slightly different way, have you tried the following?

SELECT        s.*, 
              sm.url AS media_url 
FROM          shows AS s
INNER JOIN    show_medias AS sm ON s.id = SM.show_id
WHERE `s`.`id` IN ( 
                        SELECT DISTINCT st.show_id 
                        FROM show_time_schedules AS sts 
                        LEFT JOIN show_times AS st ON st.id = sts.show_time_id 
                        WHERE sts.schedule_date BETWEEN CAST('2012-01-10' AS date) AND CAST('2012-01-14' AS date) 
                        ) 
AND            `s`.`is_active` = 1 
AND            sm.is_primary = 1
ORDER BY       s.name asc 

It would be interesting to see what the effect of that is. I would expect it to be faster as, at the moment, I think MySql will be running inner query 1 for each show you have (so that one query will be run many times. A join should be more efficient.)

Replace the INNER JOIN with a LEFT JOIN if you want all shows that don’t have a row in show_medias.

EDIT:

I’ll take a look at your EXPLAIN EXTENDED shortly, I also wonder if you want to try the following; it removes all of the subqueries:

SELECT        DISTINCT s.*,  
                       sm.url AS media_url  
FROM                   shows AS s 
INNER JOIN             show_medias AS sm ON s.id = SM.show_id
INNER JOIN             show_times AS st ON (s.id = st.show_id)
RIGHT JOIN             show_time_schedules AS sts ON (st.id = sts.show_time_id)

WHERE                  `s`.`is_active` = 1  
AND                    sm.is_primary = 1 
AND                    sts.schedule_date BETWEEN CAST('2012-01-10' AS date) AND CAST('2012-01-14' AS date)  
ORDER BY               s.name asc 

(It would also be good to see the EXPLAIN EXTENDED on these – you could add it to the comments for this one).

Further EDIT:

On your EXPLAIN EXTENDED (a good start on how to read these is here)

The USING FILESORT and USING TEMPORARY are both key indicators. Hopefully, the second query I recommend should remove any TEMPORARY tables (in the subquery). Try then leaving the ORDER BY off to see if that makes a difference (and we can add that to the findings so far 🙂

I can also see that the query is potentially missing out on a lot of index lookups; all of your id columns are prime candidates for index matches (with the usual index caveats). I’d also try adding those indexes and then running EXPLAIN EXTENDED again to see what the difference is now (EDIT as we already know from your comment above!)