MySQL optimization question -- how to speed up a simple query I have a very simple database, one table with five columns (one INTEGER key, two VARCHAR, a DATE, and a DOUBLE). The table contains 909,000 records.

A simple query like

SELECT t.price 
FROM commoddb.tbcommodprices t 
WHERE 
      t.ticker='LAV05 Comdty' 
   &amp;&amp; t.whichprice='last' 
   &amp;&amp; t.date = '2005-09-01'


takes over 1.6 seconds to respond to a local query, which seems very slow. I would appreciate any suggestions for ways to speed this up.
Here is your original query

SELECT t.price
FROM commoddb.tbcommodprices t
WHERE t.ticker='LAV05 Comdty'
AND t.whichprice='last'
t.date = '2005-09-01';


Since there is but one table in this query, all you need is a good index.

ALTER TABLE commoddb.tbcommodprices ADD INDEX (ticker,whichprice,date);


This index should now be a permanent part of the table until you decide to remove it, which I don't think you want to do. To see the table and the indexes, just do this:

SHOW CREATE TABLE commoddb.tbcommodprices\G