Odd MySQL Behavior - Query Optimization Help

Question

We have a central login that we use to support multiple websites. To store our users' data we have an accounts table which stores each user account and then users tables for each site for site specific information.

We noticed that one query that is joining the tables on their primary key user_id is executing slowly. I'm hoping that some SQL expert out there can explain why it's using WHERE to search the users_site1 table and suggest how we can optimize it. Here is the slow query & the explain results:

mysql> explain select a.user_id as 'id',a.username,a.first_name as 'first',a.last_name as 'last',a.sex,u.user_id as 'profile',u.facebook_id as 'fb_id',u.facebook_publish as 'fb_publish',u.facebook_offline as 'fb_offline',u.twitter_id as 'tw_id',u.api_session as 'mobile',a.network from accounts a left join users_site1 u ON a.user_id=u.user_id AND u.status="R" where a.status="R" AND u.status="R" AND a.facebook_id='1234567890';
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+---------+-----------------------+-------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table | type   | possible_keys  | key     | key_len | ref                   | rows  | Extra       |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+---------+-----------------------+-------+-------------+
|  1 | SIMPLE      | u     | ALL    | PRIMARY        | NULL    | NULL    | NULL                  | 79769 | Using where |
|  1 | SIMPLE      | a     | eq_ref | PRIMARY,status | PRIMARY | 4       | alltrailsdb.u.user_id |     1 | Using where |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+---------+-----------------------+-------+-------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Here are the definitions for each table:

CREATE TABLE `accounts` (
  `user_id` int(9) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `username` varchar(40) DEFAULT NULL,
  `facebook_id` bigint(15) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `facebook_username` varchar(30) DEFAULT NULL,
  `password` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
  `profile_photo` varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
  `first_name` varchar(40) DEFAULT NULL,
  `middle_name` varchar(40) DEFAULT NULL,
  `last_name` varchar(40) DEFAULT NULL,
  `suffix_name` char(3) DEFAULT NULL,
  `organization_name` varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
  `organization` tinyint(1) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `address` varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,
  `city` varchar(40) DEFAULT NULL,
  `state` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
  `zip` varchar(10) DEFAULT NULL,
  `province` varchar(40) DEFAULT NULL,
  `country` int(3) DEFAULT NULL,
  `latitude` decimal(11,7) DEFAULT NULL,
  `longitude` decimal(12,7) DEFAULT NULL,
  `phone` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
  `sex` char(1) DEFAULT NULL,
  `birthday` date DEFAULT NULL,
  `about_me` varchar(2000) DEFAULT NULL,
  `activities` varchar(300) DEFAULT NULL,
  `website` varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
  `email` varchar(150) DEFAULT NULL,
  `referrer` int(4) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `referredid` int(9) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `verify` int(6) DEFAULT NULL,
  `status` char(1) DEFAULT 'R',
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `verified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `activated` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `network` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `deleted` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `logins` int(6) unsigned DEFAULT '0',
  `api_logins` int(6) unsigned DEFAULT '0',
  `last_login` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `last_update` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `private` tinyint(1) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `ip` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`user_id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `username` (`username`),
  KEY `status` (`status`),
  KEY `state` (`state`)
);

CREATE TABLE `users_site1` (
  `user_id` int(9) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `facebook_id` bigint(15) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `facebook_username` varchar(30) DEFAULT NULL,
  `facebook_publish` tinyint(1) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `facebook_checkin` tinyint(1) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `facebook_offline` varchar(300) DEFAULT NULL,
  `twitter_id` varchar(60) DEFAULT NULL,
  `twitter_secret` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL,
  `twitter_username` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
  `type` char(1) DEFAULT 'M',
  `referrer` int(4) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `referredid` int(9) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  `session` varchar(60) DEFAULT NULL,
  `api_session` varchar(60) DEFAULT NULL,
  `status` char(1) DEFAULT 'R',
  `created` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `verified` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `activated` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `deleted` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `logins` int(6) unsigned DEFAULT '0',
  `api_logins` int(6) unsigned DEFAULT '0',
  `last_login` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `last_update` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `ip` varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`user_id`)
);

Answer 1

Add a index on the column facebook_id in the accounts table.

Current, MySql is scanning the entire users table, since it cannot find the record directly in the account table.

Answer 2

The least create 3 indexes on accounts.user_id , user_site1.user_id and accounts.facebook_id . It's likely that user_id indexes already exist as they are defined as PKs though.

Answer 3

Maybe because you haven't created indexes on the columns you're searching on??? Try indexing the columns used on the join statements. Without indexing, you're scanning through all the dataset.

CREATE INDEX accounts_user_id_index ON accounts (user_id);
CREATE INDEX accounts.facebook_id_index ON accounts (status);
CREATE INDEX user_site1.user_id_index ON user_site1 (user_id);

Answer 4

Your query is looking for rows in table accounts based on the Facebook ID and on the account "status". You don't have any indexes that help with this, so MySQL is doing a table scan. I suggest the following index:

ALTER TABLE accounts ADD INDEX (facebook_id, user_id)

If you wanted, you could even include the status column in the index. Whether this is a good idea or not would really depend on whether or not it would help to make the index an attractive choice for the optimiser for any other queries you plan to run.

PS. The comment "using where" is normal and is to be expected in most queries. The thing to be concerned about here is the fact that MySQL is not using an index, and that it thinks it has to examine a large number of rows (surely this should not be the case when you are passing in a specific ID number).