why is this query slow?

sneakyimp

here's my code:

<?
$path_to_web_root = "../";
include($path_to_web_root . '_top.php');

$sql = "SELECT * FROM demo_event_time_assoc";
echo 'sql:<br>';
echo nl2br($sql) . '<br>';

$start = get_microtime();
$result = mysql_query($sql)
  or die('query failed:' . mysql_error());
echo 'TIME EXPIRED:' . (get_microtime() - $start) . ' seconds<br>';
echo $db->numrows($result) . ' records found.';
mysql_free_result($result);
?>

here's my result:

sql:
SELECT * FROM demo_event_time_assoc
TIME EXPIRED:5.57153511047 seconds
587279 records found.

granted my dev server is only 800mhz p3, but there is no filtering or sorting or indexing required by this query. why does it take 5.57 seconds?

stolzyboy

how many fields are there in the table... there are a lot of rows, granted it shouldn't take too long, but when using *, it's gathering ALL fields and information contained in them

sneakyimp

it's got 8 fields. all integers, tinyints, or datetimes.

the issue is that it ALWAYS takes the same amount of time. never gets cached or anything. i'm starting to wonder what happens when i query from within php. like where does the result get saved? RAM? a file on disk? How does the info get handed off from mysql to php?

more importantly, HOW DO I MAKE IT FASTER? Should I go get a super fast RAID array? Or maybe my bus is too slow?

stolzyboy

what results in time if you just select one field?

select thisonefield from table;

sneakyimp

faster but still slow. about 3.5 seconds.

stolzyboy

yeah, that is pretty slow... but just to serve up a simple sql statement like that shouldn't even take a 486 that long, there must be some install/configuration issues maybe? i'm not sure where to point you unfortunately