How to Tune SQL Statements to Run SLOWER… but Make Users Feel BETTER (MySQL)?

Your end-users may keep on complaining about some functions of their database application are running slow, but you may found that those SQL statements are already reached their maximum speed in the current MySQL and hardware configuration. There may be no way to improve the SQL unless you are willing to upgrade your hardware. To make your users feel better, sometimes, you don’t have to tune your SQL to run faster but to tune your SQL to run slower for certain application’s SQL statements.

This is an example SQL that is used to display the information from tables Emp_subsidiary and Employee if they are satisfied with certain criteria. This SQL is executed as an online query and users have to wait for at least 5 seconds before any data will be shown on screen after the mouse click.

select *
from employee a, emp_subsidiary b
where a.emp_id = b.emp_id

and a.emp_grade < 1050
and b.emp_salary < 5000000​

order by a.emp_id

Here the following is the query plan and execution statistics of the SQL, it takes 5.48seconds to extract all 3645 records and the first records return time ”Response Time(Duration)” is 5.39 seconds. The query shows a “Full Table Scan b (emp_subsidiary)” to Nested-Loop “a (employee)” table, an ORDER operation is followed by sorting the returned data by emp_id. You can see there is a Sort Cost=7861.86 at the ORDER step on the query plan. It is the reason that users have to wait at least 5 seconds before they can see anything shows on the screen.


To reduce the sorting time of a.emp_id, since a.emp_id=b.emp_id, so I can rewrite the order by clause from “order by a.emp_id” to “order by b.emp_id”, MySQL now can eliminate the sorting time by using the EMPLOYEE_PK after the nested loop operation.

select *
from employee a,emp_subsidiary b
where a.emp_id = b.emp_id

and a.emp_grade < 1050
and b.emp_salary < 5000000​

order by b.emp_id



Although the overall Elapsed Time is higher in the new query plan, you can see that the response time is reduced from 5.397 seconds to 0.068, so the users can see the first page of information on the screen instantly and they don’t care whether there are 2 more seconds for all 3,645 records to be returned. That is why SQL tuning is an art rather than a science when you are going to manage your users’ expectations.

This kind of rewrite can be achieved by Tosska SQL Tuning Expert for MySQL automatically.
https://tosska.com/tosska-sql-tuning-expert-tse-for-mysql-2/