In some cases, the server creates internal temporary tables while processing statements. Users have no direct control over when this occurs.
The server creates temporary tables under conditions such as these:
-
Evaluation of
UNIONstatements, with some exceptions described later. -
Evaluation of some views, such those that use the
TEMPTABLEalgorithm,UNION, or aggregation. -
Evaluation of derived tables (see Section 13.2.10.8, “Derived Tables”).
-
Tables created for subquery or semijoin materialization (see Section 8.2.2, “Optimizing Subqueries, Derived Tables, and View References”).
-
Evaluation of statements that contain an
ORDER BYclause and a differentGROUP BYclause, or for which theORDER BYorGROUP BYcontains columns from tables other than the first table in the join queue. -
Evaluation of
DISTINCTcombined withORDER BYmay require a temporary table. -
For queries that use the
SQL_SMALL_RESULTmodifier, MySQL uses an in-memory temporary table, unless the query also contains elements (described later) that require on-disk storage. -
To evaluate
INSERT ... SELECTstatements that select from and insert into the same table, MySQL creates an internal temporary table to hold the rows from theSELECT, then inserts those rows into the target table. See Section 13.2.5.1, “INSERT ... SELECT Statement”. -
Evaluation of multiple-table
UPDATEstatements. -
Evaluation of
GROUP_CONCAT()orCOUNT(DISTINCT)expressions.
To determine whether a statement requires a temporary table, use EXPLAIN and check the Extra column to see whether it says Using temporary (see Section 8.8.1, “Optimizing Queries with EXPLAIN”). EXPLAIN will not necessarily say Using temporary for derived or materialized temporary tables.
When the server creates an internal temporary table (either in memory or on disk), it increments the Created_tmp_tables status variable. If the server creates the table on disk (either initially or by converting an in-memory table) it increments the Created_tmp_disk_tables status variable.
Some query conditions prevent the use of an in-memory temporary table, in which case the server uses an on-disk table instead:
-
Presence of a
BLOBorTEXTcolumn in the table. This includes user-defined variables having a string value because they are treated asBLOBorTEXTcolumns, depending on whether their value is a binary or nonbinary string, respectively. -
Presence of any string column with a maximum length larger than 512 (bytes for binary strings, characters for nonbinary strings) in the
SELECTlist, ifUNIONorUNION ALLis used. -
The
SHOW COLUMNSandDESCRIBEstatements useBLOBas the type for some columns, thus the temporary table used for the results is an on-disk table.
The server does not use a temporary table for UNION statements that meet certain qualifications. Instead, it retains from temporary table creation only the data structures necessary to perform result column typecasting. The table is not fully instantiated and no rows are written to or read from it; rows are sent directly to the client. The result is reduced memory and disk requirements, and smaller delay before the first row is sent to the client because the server need not wait until the last query block is executed. EXPLAIN and optimizer trace output reflects this execution strategy: The UNION RESULT query block is not present because that block corresponds to the part that reads from the temporary table.
These conditions qualify a UNION for evaluation without a temporary table:
-
The union is
UNION ALL, notUNIONorUNION DISTINCT. -
There is no global
ORDER BYclause. -
The union is not the top-level query block of an
{INSERT | REPLACE} ... SELECT ...statement.
An internal temporary table can be held in memory and processed by the MEMORY storage engine, or stored on disk by the InnoDB or MyISAM storage engine.
If an internal temporary table is created as an in-memory table but becomes too large, MySQL automatically converts it to an on-disk table. The maximum size for in-memory temporary tables is defined by the tmp_table_size or max_heap_table_size value, whichever is smaller. This differs from MEMORY tables explicitly created with CREATE TABLE. For such tables, only the max_heap_table_size variable determines how large a table can grow, and there is no conversion to on-disk format.
The internal_tmp_disk_storage_engine variable defines the storage engine the server uses to manage on-disk internal temporary tables. Permitted values are INNODB (the default) and MYISAM.
When using internal_tmp_disk_storage_engine=INNODB, queries that generate on-disk internal temporary tables that exceed InnoDB row or column limits return Row size too large or Too many columns errors. The workaround is to set internal_tmp_disk_storage_engine to MYISAM.
In-memory temporary tables are managed by the MEMORY storage engine, which uses fixed-length row format. VARCHAR and VARBINARY column values are padded to the maximum column length, in effect storing them as CHAR and BINARY columns.
On-disk temporary tables are managed by the InnoDB or MyISAM storage engine (depending on the internal_tmp_disk_storage_engine setting). Both engines store temporary tables using dynamic-width row format. Columns take only as much storage as needed, which reduces disk I/O, space requirements, and processing time compared to on-disk tables that use fixed-length rows.
For statements that initially create an internal temporary table in memory, then convert it to an on-disk table, better performance might be achieved by skipping the conversion step and creating the table on disk to begin with. The big_tables variable can be used to force disk storage of internal temporary tables.
-
Property Value Command-Line Format --big-tables[={OFF|ON}]System Variable big_tablesScope Global, Session Dynamic Yes Type Boolean Default Value OFFIf enabled, the server stores all temporary tables on disk rather than in memory. This prevents most
The tableerrors fortbl_nameis fullSELECToperations that require a large temporary table, but also slows down queries for which in-memory tables would suffice.The default value for new connection is
OFF(use in-memory temporary tables). Normally, it should never be necessary to enable this variable because the server is able to handle large result sets automatically by using memory for small temporary tables and switching to disk-based tables as required.
Mysql：Internal Temporary Table：【不可直接控制】的【内部】临时表：不要blob、不要text、不要太长>512的（二进制）字符串列！