Re: Subquery with range uses filesort

[Rick James]

> it is a shared server, so no guarantee my data would be cached

Define "shared".
* One instance of mysqld; each user has one database in it.
* Separate instances of mysqld for each user.

In the former case, I can see their reluctance to change anything. In the latter case, they should not be reluctant, other than to avoid overloading the RAM that is allotted to you.

> innodb_buffer_pool_size 8388608

8M is terribly small for InnoDB. So, don't switch to InnoDB unless you can get them to raise that value.

> so no guarantee my data would be cached

* Single instance -- other users could bump your blocks out of cache
* Multiple instances -- caching depends mostly on things that you control.

> doing a sort to find the most recent history record in the subquery rather than using the index.

Well... Data blocks and Index blocks are each cached. The difference in speed (between first and subsequent runs) is almost entirely due to caching. That is, if it used an index one time, it will use the index the other time. The first run is mostly I/O bound; subsequent runs are mostly CPU bound.

> join History on HistoryPlayer = PlayerID
> and ( HistoryDate, HistoryDirector ) = ( select ...

Please also try

join History h on HistoryPlayer = PlayerID
JOIN ( select ... ) x
ON h.History = x.HistoryDate AND h.HistoryDirector = x.HistoryDirector

(I may not have gotten the "h." correct.) The reason for asking for this that "WHERE (a,b) = (c,d)" is not always well optimized.