Alternative to SELECT .. IN (..)

Question

I have table with 3 columns: id (of person), city (which person visited) and date (of his visit). I need to select all people (their ids) which were in city Los Angeles between specific date, who also were in city New York on some other specific date.

Here is an example of the query I run now:

SELECT DISTINCT id 
FROM places 
WHERE date >= '2011-03-18' AND 
      date < '2011-03-19' AND 
      city = 'los angeles' AND 
      id IN (SELECT DISTINCT id 
             FROM places 
             WHERE date >= '2011-03-15' AND 
                   date < '2011-03-16' AND 
                   city = 'chicago' 
             GROUP BY id);

Anything I can also? Is there are any other query I can use? This select is way too slow.

Answer 1

Using a join (with an alias) instead of a subquery should perform better:

  SELECT places.id 
    FROM places 
         JOIN places AS places2 ON places2.id = places.id
     AND places2.date >= '2011-03-15' 
     AND places2.date < '2011-03-16' 
     AND places2.city = 'chicago' 
   WHERE places.date >= '2011-03-18' 
     AND places.date < '2011-03-19' 
     AND places.city = 'los angeles' 
GROUP BY places.id;

Answer 2

First you need to make sure that you have the relevant indexes in place. In this case it is probably one index with two columns date and city. After that you can take your query and compare the performance with the queries suggested here. Inner join might be faster than what you already got.

My version works in SQL Server. I might work in other DBMS as well.

select id 
from places 
where [date] >= '2011-03-18' AND 
      [date] < '2011-03-19' AND 
      city = 'los angeles'
intersect       
select id 
from places 
where [date] >= '2011-03-15' AND 
      [date] < '2011-03-16' AND 
      city = 'chicago';

Answer 3

SELECT id
FROM places AS p1
INNER JOIN AS p2 ON p1.id = p2.id AND p2.date >= '2011-03-15' AND p2.date < '2011-03-19'
   AND p2.city = 'chicago'
WHERE p1.date >= '2011-03-18' AND p1.date < '2011-03-19' AND p1.city = 'los angelis'

Answer 4

Try the inner join

SELECT DISTINCT p1.id 
FROM places p1
INNER JOIN places p2 ON p1.id = p2.id AND
      p2.date >= '2011-03-18' AND 
      p2.date < '2011-03-19' AND 
      p2.city = 'los angeles'
WHERE p1.date >= '2011-03-18' AND 
      p1.date < '2011-03-19' AND 
      p1.city = 'los angeles' AND 

Check the indexes on the table and see if you have any on city and date.