CONCAT and Index in where clause

[Aurelien PANIZZA]

Hi,

I've got a really slow query (which I can't change) using the concat function in the where clause.

The query looks like :
SELECT * from MyTABLE WHERE CONCAT(YEAR,'-',MONTH,'-',DAY) = '2012-08-21';

Where 'YEAR', 'MONTH' and 'DAY' are three fields of type CHAR.

I tried to add an index only on the column YEAR (I don't think an Index on the three columns would be usefull because of the CONCAT function).

I can't get the index to be used in this case. I've seen some cases where there are types INT and CHAR in the CONCAT function, and so a function like CAST must be used to convert the INT type, but this is not my case.

Do you have any idea on how to get this fixed ?

(I'm looking with EXPLAIN SELECT ..., but the index is not listed as "possible_keys").