Indexes are used to find rows with specific column values quickly. Without an index, MySQL must begin with the first record and then read through the entire table to find the relevant rows. The larger the table, the more this costs. If the table has an index for the columns in question, MySQL can quickly determine the position to seek to in the middle of the data file without having to look at all the data. If a table has 1,000 rows, then this is at least 100 times faster than reading sequentially. Note that if you need to access most of the rows, it is faster to read sequentially, because this minimizes disk seeks.

Most MySQL indexes (PRIMARY KEY, UNIQUE, INDEX, and FULLTEXT) are stored in B-trees. Exceptions are that indexes on spatial column types use R-trees, and that MEMORY tables also support hash indexes.

Strings are automatically prefix- and end-space compressed. See Sección 13.1.4, “Sintaxis de CREATE INDEX”.

In general, indexes are used as described in the following discussion. Characteristics specific to hash indexes (as used in MEMORY tables) are described at the end of this section.

Indexes are used for these operations:

Suppose that you issue the following SELECT statement:

mysql> SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE col1=val1 AND col2=val2;

If a multiple-column index exists on col1 and col2, the appropriate rows can be fetched directly. If separate single-column indexes exist on col1 and col2, the optimizer tries to find the most restrictive index by deciding which index finds fewer rows and using that index to fetch the rows.

If the table has a multiple-column index, any leftmost prefix of the index can be used by the optimizer to find rows. For example, if you have a three-column index on (col1, col2, col3), you have indexed search capabilities on (col1), (col1, col2), and (col1, col2, col3).

MySQL cannot use a partial index if the columns do not form a leftmost prefix of the index. Suppose that you have the SELECT statements shown here:

SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE col1=val1;
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE col2=val2;
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE col2=val2 AND col3=val3;

If an index exists on (col1, col2, col3), only the first of the preceding queries uses the index. The second and third queries do involve indexed columns, but (col2) and (col2, col3) are not leftmost prefixes of (col1, col2, col3).

A B-tree index can be used for column comparisons in expressions that use the =, >, >=, <, <=, or BETWEEN operators. The index also can be used for LIKE comparisons if the argument to LIKE is a constant string that doesn't start with a wildcard character. For example, the following SELECT statements use indexes:

SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_col LIKE 'Patrick%';
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_col LIKE 'Pat%_ck%';

In the first statement, only rows with 'Patrick' <= key_col < 'Patricl' are considered. In the second statement, only rows with 'Pat' <= key_col < 'Pau' are considered.

The following SELECT statements do not use indexes:

SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_col LIKE '%Patrick%';
SELECT * FROM tbl_name WHERE key_col LIKE other_col;

In the first statement, the LIKE value begins with a wildcard character. In the second statement, the LIKE value is not a constant.

MySQL 5.0 performs an additional LIKE optimization. If you use ... LIKE '%string%' and string is longer than three characters, MySQL uses the Turbo Boyer-Moore algorithm to initialize the pattern for the string and then employs this pattern to perform the search more quickly.

A search using col_name IS NULL employs indexes if col_name is indexed.

Any index that does not span all AND levels in the WHERE clause is not used to optimize the query. In other words, to be able to use an index, a prefix of the index must be used in every AND group.

The following WHERE clauses use indexes:

... WHERE index_part1=1 AND index_part2=2 AND other_column=3
    /* index = 1 OR index = 2 */
... WHERE index=1 OR A=10 AND index=2
    /* optimized like "index_part1='hello'" */
... WHERE index_part1='hello' AND index_part3=5
    /* Can use index on index1 but not on index2 or index3 */
... WHERE index1=1 AND index2=2 OR index1=3 AND index3=3;

These WHERE clauses do not use indexes:

    /* index_part1 is not used */
... WHERE index_part2=1 AND index_part3=2
    /* Index is not used in both AND parts */
... WHERE index=1 OR A=10
    /* No index spans all rows  */
... WHERE index_part1=1 OR index_part2=10

Sometimes MySQL does not use an index, even if one is available. One circumstance under which this occurs is when the optimizer estimates that using the index would require MySQL to access a very large percentage of the rows in the table. (In this case, a table scan is likely to be much faster, since it requires fewer seeks.) However, if such a query uses LIMIT to only retrieve some of the rows, MySQL uses an index anyway, because it can much more quickly find the few rows to return in the result.

Hash indexes have somewhat different characteristics than those just discussed: