How to fetch lots of database table records by primary key?

Question

Using the ADO.NET MySQL Connector, what is a good way to fetch lots of records (1000+) by primary key?

I have a table with just a few small columns, and a VARCHAR(128) primary key. Currently it has about 100k entries, but this will become more in the future.

In the beginning, I thought I would use the SQL IN statement:

SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `id` IN ('key1', 'key2', [...], 'key1000')

But with this the query could be come very long, and also I would have to manually escape quote characters in the keys etc.

Now I use a MySQL MEMORY table (tempid INT, id VARCHAR(128)) to first upload all the keys with prepared INSERT statements. Then I make a join to select all the existing keys, after which I clean up the mess in the memory table.

Is there a better way to do this?

Note: Ok maybe its not the best idea to have a string as primary key, but the question would be the same if the VARCHAR column would be a normal index.

Temporary table: So far it seems the solution is to put the data into a temporary table, and then JOIN, which is basically what I currently do (see above).

Answer 1

If your primary keys follow some pattern, you can select where key like 'abc%'.

If you want to get out 1000 at a time, in some kind of sequence, you may want to have another int column in your data table with a clustered index. This would do the same job as your current memory table - allow you to select by int range.

What is the nature of the primary key? It is anything meaningful?

Answer 2

If you're concerned about performance I definitely wouldn't recommend an 'IN' clause. It's much better try do an INNER JOIN if you can.

You can either first insert all the values into a temporary table and join to that or do a sub-select. Best is to actually profile the changes and figure out what works best for you.

Answer 3

Why can't you consider using a Table valued parameter to push the keys in the form of a DataTable and fetch the matching records back?

Or

Simply you write a private method that can concatenate all the key codes from a provided collection and return a single string and pass that string to the query.

I think it may solve your problem.

Answer 4

I've dealt with a similar situation in a Payroll system where the user needed to generate reports based on a selection of employees (eg. employees X,Y,Z... or employees that work in certain offices). I've built a filter window with all the employees and all the attributes that could be considered as a filter criteria, and had that window save selected employee id's in a filter table from the database. I did this because:

1. Generating SELECT queries with dynamically generated IN filter is just ugly and highly unpractical.
2. I could join that table in all my queries that needed to use the filter window.

Might not be the best solution out there but served, and still serves me very well.