Faster subqueries with materialization
In a previous post , I analyzed how a query of the famous DBT3 benchmark was optimized by MySQL. It was this query, named "Q16" in the DBT3 jargon: select p_brand, p_type, p_size, count(distinct ps_suppkey) as supplier_cnt from partsupp, part where p_partkey = ps_partkey and p_brand <> 'Brand#23' and p_type not like 'LARGE PLATED%' and p_size in (43, 1, 25, 5, 35, 12, 42, 40) and ps_suppkey not in ( select s_suppkey from supplier where s_comment like '%Customer%Complaints%' ) group by p_brand, p_type, p_size order by supplier_cnt desc, p_brand, p_type, p_size; Here is a brief recap of conclusions I had drawn: for this query, MySQL tranforms the IN condition to EXISTS and then evaluates it with the "unique_subquery" technique, which does an index lookup into the subquery's table. IN is evaluated 120,000 times (once per combined row of the outer tables). The total execution time of query Q16