Re: Using an ENUM column in an index

[Tom Byars]

I originally added the ENUM column to the indexes because making them unique seemed to speed the queries up no end. Since reading your comments and then doing some testing and studying a few explains I've discovered MySQL wasn't using the correct indexes for many of the queries. Adding 'use index (MyIndex)' to them has made the non-unique indexes just as fast as the unique indexes with the enum column. Removing raceID from the indexes hasn't slowed the queries down by much although I've a bit more testing to do with this.

I'm now fairly sure where I'm going now. I'd like to thank you both for your comments as not only have I learned a lot but the task in hand has been made a lot simpler for me and will actually make the database smaller in size.