How to Tune UPDATE SQL statement with IN subquery (I) ?

optimization of SQL queries

The following is an example shows an Update SQL statement with an “IN” subquery. It updates records from emp_subsidiary that satisfies the “IN” subquery conditions.

update emp_subsidiary set emp_name =‘Deleted Name’
where   emp_dept in
(select dpt_id from department
 where dpt_avg_salary<=6000);

Here the following is the query plan of this SQL, it takes 7.55 seconds to finish the update. The query shows an attached_subqueries attached to a Full Index Scan of emp_subsidiary table. It means that the 295344 rows in emp_subsidiary is going to check the subquery’s conditions one by one.

Let me rewrite the SQL into the following join update syntax.

update emp_subsidiary e1, department d1
set    e1.emp_name=‘Deleted Name’
where  e1.emp_dept = d1.dpt_id
       and d1.dpt_avg_salary <= 6000

The following is the query plan of the rewritten SQL and it takes only 1.22 seconds to complete. The new query plan shows a “Nested Loop” from Department table to Emp_subsidiary table, due to the condition “dpt_avg_salary <= 6000” has been executed before it is going to loop the Emp_subsidiary table, it saved a lot of unnecessary time to detect every record in Emp_subsidiary table.

This kind of rewrites can be achieved by Tosska SQL Tuning Expert for MySQL automatically, it shows that the rewrite is more than 6 times faster than the original SQL.

https://tosska.com/tosska-sql-tuning-expert-tse-for-mysql-2/