We’ve been helping a long-term client who runs some fairly complex queries (covering lots of tables and logic on a respectably big but mainly volatile dataset). We tend to look first at query structure and table design, as fixing problems there tends to have the most impact. This contrary to just tossing more hardware at the problem, which is just expensive.

As subqueries are used (and necessary in this case), MariaDB 5.3 was already a great help with its subquery optimisations. Once again thanks, Monty and the Monty Program optimiser team (Igor, Sergey, Timour, and possibly others) – all former colleagues and they’re absolutely awesome. Together, they know the MySQL optimiser like no other.

Because the queries are generated indirectly from an exposed API (just for paying clients, but still), the load is more unpredictable than having merely a local front-end. Maintaining spare capacity with slaves addresses this, but …