MK-QUERY-ADVISOR(1)

NAME
mk-query-advisor - Analyze queries and advise on possible problems.

SYNOPSIS
Usage: mk-query-advisor [OPTION...] [FILE]

mk-query-advisor analyzes queries and advises on possible problems. Queries are given either by specifying slowlog files, --query, or --review.

   # Analyzer all queries in the given slowlog
   mk-query-advisor /path/to/slow-query.log

   # Get queries from tcpdump using mk-query-digest
   mk-query-digest --type tcpdump.txt --print --no-report | mk-query-advisor

   # Get queries from a general log
   mk-query-advisor --type genlog mysql.log

RISKS
The following section is included to inform users about the potential risks, whether known or unknown, of using this tool. The two main categories of risks are those created by the nature of the tool (e.g. read-only tools vs. read-write tools) and those created by bugs.

mk-query-advisor simply reads queries and examines them, and is thus very low risk.

At the time of this release there is a bug that may cause an infinite (or very long) loop when parsing very large queries.

The authoritative source for updated information is always the online issue tracking system. Issues that affect this tool will be marked as such. You can see a list of such issues at the following URL: <http://www.maatkit.org/bugs/mk-query-advisor>.

See also "BUGS" for more information on filing bugs and getting help.

DESCRIPTION
mk-query-advisor examines queries and applies rules to them, trying to find queries that look bad according to the rules. It reports on queries that match the rules, so you can find bad practices or hidden problems in your SQL. By default, it accepts a MySQL slow query log as input.

RULES
These are the rules that mk-query-advisor will apply to the queries it examines. Each rule has three bits of information: an ID, a severity and a description.

The rule's ID is its identifier. We use a seven-character ID, and the naming convention is three characters, a period, and a three-digit number. The first three characters are sort of an abbreviation of the general class of the rule. For example, ALI.001 is some rule related to how the query uses aliases.

The rule's severity is an indication of how important it is that this rule matched a query. We use NOTE, WARN, and CRIT to denote these levels.

The rule's description is a textual, human-readable explanation of what it means when a query matches this rule. Depending on the verbosity of the report you generate, you will see more of the text in the description. By default, you'll see only the first sentence, which is sort of a terse synopsis of the rule's meaning. At a higher verbosity, you'll see subsequent sentences.

ALI.001
    severity: note

    Aliasing without the AS keyword. Explicitly using the AS keyword in column or table aliases, such as "tbl AS alias," is more readable than implicit aliases such as "tbl alias".

ALI.002
    severity: warn

    Aliasing the '*' wildcard. Aliasing a column wildcard, such as "SELECT tbl.* col1, col2" probably indicates a bug in your SQL. You probably meant for the query to retrieve col1, but instead it renames the last column in the *-wildcarded list.

ALI.003
    severity: note

    Aliasing without renaming. The table or column's alias is the same as its real name, and the alias just makes the query harder to read.

ARG.001
    severity: warn

    Argument with leading wildcard. An argument has a leading wildcard character, such as "%foo". The predicate with this argument is not sargable and cannot use an index if one exists.

ARG.002
    severity: note

    LIKE without a wildcard. A LIKE pattern that does not include a wildcard is potentially a bug in the SQL.

CLA.001
    severity: warn

    SELECT without WHERE. The SELECT statement has no WHERE clause.

CLA.002
    severity: note

    ORDER BY RAND(). ORDER BY RAND() is a very inefficient way to retrieve a random row from the results.

CLA.003
    severity: note

    LIMIT with OFFSET. Paginating a result set with LIMIT and OFFSET is O(n^2) complexity, and will cause performance problems as the data grows larger.

CLA.004
    severity: note

    Ordinal in the GROUP BY clause. Using a number in the GROUP BY clause, instead of an expression or column name, can cause problems if the query is changed.

CLA.005
    severity: warn

    ORDER BY constant column.

CLA.006
    severity: warn

    GROUP BY or ORDER BY different tables will force a temp table and filesort.

CLA.007
    severity: warn

    ORDER BY different directions prevents index from being used. All tables in the ORDER BY clause must be either ASC or DESC, else MySQL cannot use an index.

COL.001
    severity: note

    SELECT *. Selecting all columns with the * wildcard will cause the query's meaning and behavior to change if the table's schema changes, and might cause the query to retrieve too much data.

COL.002
    severity: note

    Blind INSERT. The INSERT or REPLACE query doesn't specify the columns explicitly, so the query's behavior will change if the table's schema changes; use "INSERT INTO tbl(col1, col2) VALUES..." instead.

LIT.001
    severity: warn

    Storing an IP address as characters. The string literal looks like an IP address, but is not an argument to INET_ATON(), indicating that the data is stored as characters instead of as integers. It is more efficient to store IP addresses as integers.

LIT.002
    severity: warn

    Unquoted date/time literal. A query such as "WHERE col<2010-02-12" is valid SQL but is probably a bug; the literal should be quoted.

KWR.001
    severity: note

    SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS is inefficient. SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS can cause performance problems because it does not scale well; use alternative strategies to build functionality such as paginated result screens.

JOI.001
    severity: crit

    Mixing comma and ANSI joins. Mixing comma joins and ANSI joins is confusing to humans, and the behavior differs between some MySQL versions.

JOI.002
    severity: crit

    A table is joined twice. The same table appears at least twice in the FROM clause.

JOI.003
    severity: warn

    Reference to outer table column in WHERE clause prevents OUTER JOIN, implicitly converts to INNER JOIN.

JOI.004
    severity: warn

    Exclusion join uses wrong column in WHERE. The exclusion join (LEFT OUTER JOIN with a WHERE clause that is satisfied only if there is no row in the right-hand table) seems to use the wrong column in the WHERE clause. A query such as "... FROM l LEFT OUTER JOIN r ON l.l=r.r WHERE r.z IS NULL" probably ought to list r.r in the WHERE IS NULL clause.

RES.001
    severity: warn

    Non-deterministic GROUP BY. The SQL retrieves columns that are neither in an aggregate function nor the GROUP BY expression, so these values will be non-deterministic in the result.

RES.002
    severity: warn

    LIMIT without ORDER BY. LIMIT without ORDER BY causes non-deterministic results, depending on the query execution plan.

STA.001
    severity: note

    != is non-standard. Use the <> operator to test for inequality.

SUB.001
    severity: crit

    IN() and NOT IN() subqueries are poorly optimized. MySQL executes the subquery as a dependent subquery for each row in the outer query. This is a frequent cause of serious performance problems. This might change version 6.0 of MySQL, but for versions 5.1 and older, the query should be rewritten as a JOIN or a LEFT OUTER JOIN, respectively.

OPTIONS
"--query" and "--review" are mutually exclusive.

This tool accepts additional command-line arguments. Refer to the "SYNOPSIS" and usage information for details.

--ask-pass
    Prompt for a password when connecting to MySQL.

--charset
    short form: -A; type: string

    Default character set. If the value is utf8, sets Perl's binmode on STDOUT to utf8, passes the mysql_enable_utf8 option to DBD::mysql, and runs SET NAMES UTF8 after connecting to MySQL. Any other value sets binmode on STDOUT without the utf8 layer, and runs SET NAMES after connecting to MySQL.

--config
    type: Array

    Read this comma-separated list of config files; if specified, this must be the first option on the command line.

--[no]continue-on-error
    default: yes

    Continue working even if there is an error.

--daemonize
    Fork to the background and detach from the shell. POSIX operating systems only.

--database
    short form: -D; type: string

    Connect to this database. This is also used as the default database for "--[no]show-create-table" if a query does not use database-qualified tables.

--defaults-file
    short form: -F; type: string

    Only read mysql options from the given file. You must give an absolute pathname.

--group-by
    type: string; default: rule_id

    Group items in the report by this attribute. Possible attributes are:

       ATTRIBUTE GROUPS
       ========= ==========================================================
       rule_id   Items matching the same rule ID
       query_id  Queries with the same ID (the same fingerprint)
       none      No grouping, report each query and its advice individually

--help
    Show help and exit.

--host
    short form: -h; type: string

    Connect to host.

--ignore-rules
    type: hash

    Ignore these rule IDs.

    Specify a comma-separated list of rule IDs (e.g. LIT.001,RES.002,etc.) to ignore. Currently, the rule IDs are case-sensitive and must be uppercase.

--password
    short form: -p; type: string

    Password to use when connecting.

--pid
    type: string

    Create the given PID file when daemonized. The file contains the process ID of the daemonized instance. The PID file is removed when the daemonized instance exits. The program checks for the existence of the PID file when starting; if it exists and the process with the matching PID exists, the program exits.

--port
    short form: -P; type: int

    Port number to use for connection.

--print-all
    Print all queries, even those that do not match any rules. With "--group-by" "none", non-matching queries are printed in the main report and profile. For other "--group-by" values, non-matching queries are only printed in the profile. Non-matching queries have zeros for "NOTE", "WARN" and "CRIT" in the profile.

--query
    type: string

    Analyze this single query and ignore files and STDIN. This option allows you to supply a single query on the command line. Any files also specified on the command line are ignored.

--report-format
    type: string; default: compact

    Type of report format: full or compact. In full mode, every query's report contains the description of the rules it matched, even if this information was previously displayed. In compact mode, the repeated information is suppressed, and only the rule ID is displayed.

--review
    type: DSN

    Analyze queries from this mk-query-digest query review table.

--sample
    type: int; default: 1

    How many samples of the query to show.

--set-vars
    type: string; default: wait_timeout=10000

    Set these MySQL variables. Immediately after connecting to MySQL, this string will be appended to SET and executed.

--[no]show-create-table
    default: yes

    Get "SHOW CREATE TABLE" for each query's table.

    If host connection options are given (like "--host", "--port", etc.) then the tool will also get "SHOW CREATE TABLE" for each query. This information is needed for some rules like JOI.004. If this option is disabled by specifying "--no-show-create-table" then some rules may not be checked.

--socket
    short form: -S; type: string

    Socket file to use for connection.

--type
    type: Array

    The type of input to parse (default slowlog). The permitted types are slowlog and genlog.

--user
    short form: -u; type: string

    User for login if not current user.

--verbose
    short form: -v; cumulative: yes; default: 1

    Increase verbosity of output. At the default level of verbosity, the program prints only the first sentence of each rule's description. At higher levels, the program prints more of the description. See also "--report-format".

--version
    Show version and exit.

--where
    type: string

    Apply this WHERE clause to the SELECT query on the "--review" table.

DSN OPTIONS
These DSN options are used to create a DSN. Each option is given like "option=value". The options are case-sensitive, so P and p are not the same option. There cannot be whitespace before or after the "=" and if the value contains whitespace it must be quoted. DSN options are comma-separated. See the maatkit manpage for full details.

•   A

    dsn: charset; copy: yes

    Default character set.

•   D

    dsn: database; copy: yes

    Database that contains the query review table.

•   F

    dsn: mysql_read_default_file; copy: yes

    Only read default options from the given file

•   h

    dsn: host; copy: yes

    Connect to host.

•   p

    dsn: password; copy: yes

    Password to use when connecting.

•   P

    dsn: port; copy: yes

    Port number to use for connection.

•   S

    dsn: mysql_socket; copy: yes

    Socket file to use for connection.

•   t

    Table to use as the query review table.

•   u

    dsn: user; copy: yes

    User for login if not current user.

DOWNLOADING
You can download Maatkit from Google Code at <http://code.google.com/p/maatkit/>, or you can get any of the tools easily with a command like the following:

   wget http://www.maatkit.org/get/toolname
   or
   wget http://www.maatkit.org/trunk/toolname

Where "toolname" can be replaced with the name (or fragment of a name) of any of the Maatkit tools. Once downloaded, they're ready to run; no installation is needed. The first URL gets the latest released version of the tool, and the second gets the latest trunk code from Subversion.

ENVIRONMENT
The environment variable "MKDEBUG" enables verbose debugging output in all of the Maatkit tools:

   MKDEBUG=1 mk-....

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
You need the following Perl modules: DBI and DBD::mysql.

BUGS
For a list of known bugs see <http://www.maatkit.org/bugs/mk-query-advisor>.

Please use Google Code Issues and Groups to report bugs or request support: <http://code.google.com/p/maatkit/>. You can also join #maatkit on Freenode to discuss Maatkit.

Please include the complete command-line used to reproduce the problem you are seeing, the version of all MySQL servers involved, the complete output of the tool when run with "--version", and if possible, debugging output produced by running with the "MKDEBUG=1" environment variable.

COPYRIGHT, LICENSE AND WARRANTY
This program is copyright 2009-2011 Percona Inc. Feedback and improvements are welcome.

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2; OR the Perl Artistic License. On UNIX and similar systems, you can issue `man perlgpl' or `man perlartistic' to read these licenses.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.

AUTHOR
Baron Schwartz, Daniel Nichter

ABOUT MAATKIT
This tool is part of Maatkit, a toolkit for power users of MySQL. Maatkit was created by Baron Schwartz; Baron and Daniel Nichter are the primary code contributors. Both are employed by Percona. Financial support for Maatkit development is primarily provided by Percona and its clients.

VERSION
This manual page documents Ver 1.0.4 Distrib 7540 $Revision: 7531 $.