MySQL Subquery Optimization Strategies and Rewriting DELETE with JOIN

The article starts with a problematic DELETE statement that scans the whole table despite both the outer bizCustomerIncoming_id column and the inner cid column being indexed.

Subquery optimization strategies

For IN and =ANY subqueries MySQL may choose semijoin , materialization or exists . For NOT IN and <>ALL it can use materialization or exists . For derived tables the optimizer can apply derived_merge (merge the derived table into the outer query) or materialization (materialize the derived table as a temporary internal table).

Important limitation

UPDATE and DELETE statements cannot use the semijoin or materialization strategies; they fall back to the exists approach, which often leads to a full scan.

Illustrative example

CREATE TABLE `t2` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `a` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `b` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `a` (`a`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;

delimiter ;;
create procedure idata()
begin
  declare i int;
  set i=1;
  while(i<=1000) do
    insert into t2 values(i,i,i);
    set i=i+1;
  end while;
end;;
delimiter ;
call idata();
create table t1 like t2;
insert into t1 select * from t2 where id<=100;

Running a query with IN (SELECT ...) is expected to be executed as a simple lookup, but MySQL rewrites it to an EXISTS correlated subquery, producing a DEPENDENT SUBQUERY plan and scanning many rows.

Semi‑join

When the outer table is large, executing the subquery for each outer row is inefficient. MySQL can transform the query into a join, or, if the semantics allow, use a semi‑join which eliminates duplicate rows while preserving the IN meaning. The optimizer may implement the semi‑join via a materialized temporary table and then probe the outer table.

select t1.*
from t1
join t2 on t1.a=t2.b and t2.id<10;

Materialization

Materialization materializes the subquery result into a temporary table (with a primary key to deduplicate) and then joins it once, reducing the total scanned rows dramatically. The plan shows a MATERIALIZED select_type for the subquery.

+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------+------+------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table | type  | key     | ref  | rows | Extra       |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------+------+------+-------------+
| 1  | PRIMARY     | t1    | ALL   | NULL    | NULL | 100  | Using where |
| 2  | SUBQUERY    | t2    | range | PRIMARY | NULL | 9    | Using where |
+----+-------------+-------+-------+---------+------+------+-------------+

The optimizer switches for these strategies are controlled by optimizer_switch flags semijoin and materialization .

Conclusion

Because DELETE cannot use semijoin or materialization, the original statement performs a full‑table scan; rewriting it as a JOIN eliminates the scan:

delete biz_customer_incoming_path
from biz_customer_incoming_path a
join biz_customer_incoming b
  on a.bizCustomerIncoming_id = b.id
where b.cid = '7Ex46Dz22Fqq6iuPCLPlzQ';

References: MySQL 5.7 Subquery Optimization documentation and the “High Performance MySQL” book, chapter 6.5.1.