How to optimize the most frequent MySQL SELECT query

Question

I have a MySQL table with millions of records, and there are hundreds of records inserted into the table every day.

In the front-end, it displays the most recent 100 records using the query:

SELECT * FROM 
table_a 
ORDER BY creation_time DESC 
LIMIT 100

Every time a user visits the page, it will scan through the large table and perform the sorting. The procedure looks very resources consuming.

I find that there is a VIEW in MySQL. Does it help to optimize the performance if I create a view to store the results? Is the view synchronized with the original table? Or any other means to boost the query performance?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can try following things to speed up your query:

1. Select only required column(s) instead of all (*) in SELECT Query.
2. Create Indexes on creation_time.