Description:
The query optimiser isn't currently aware of "impossible" parts of a UNION SELECT: An inner query could be optimised away completely if it contains a WHERE clause contradicting another WHERE clause in an outer statement, similar to partition pruning.
This feature request describes the behaviour in subqueries, but the feature would be especially useful in VIEWs with a UNION once they are accepted as ALGORITHM=MERGE. See http://www.futhark.ch/mysql/137.html for a detailed explanation of this.
How to repeat:
Create two tables and insert some data:
CREATE TABLE t_current (
d date NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
c char(1) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM;
CREATE TABLE t_archive (
d date NOT NULL,
c char(1) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=ARCHIVE;
INSERT INTO t_archive (d, c) VALUES ('2005-05-13', 'a');
INSERT INTO t_current (d, c) VALUES ('2006-03-01', 'c');
Create a table and a function to log the behaviour of the final query:
CREATE TABLE log (accessed ENUM('t_archive', 't_current'));
delimiter //
CREATE FUNCTION log_access(accessed ENUM('t_archive', 't_current'))
RETURNS ENUM('t_archive', 't_current')
DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN
INSERT INTO log VALUES (accessed);
RETURN accessed;
END //
delimiter ;
Execute a UNION SELECT that can only return rows from one of the two tables:
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT d, c, log_access('t_current') AS accessed
FROM t_current
WHERE d >= '2006-01-01'
UNION
SELECT d, c, log_access('t_archive') AS accessed
FROM t_archive
WHERE d < '2006-01-01'
) AS s WHERE d > '2006-01-01';
+------------+---+-----------+
| d | c | accessed |
+------------+---+-----------+
| 2006-03-01 | c | t_current |
+------------+---+-----------+
1 row in set (0.03 sec)
The log shows that still both of the tables have been accessed:
SELECT * FROM log;
+-----------+
| accessed |
+-----------+
| t_current |
| t_archive |
+-----------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Suggested fix:
The query optimiser should eliminate parts of a UNION statement that can't contribute any rows to the final result set due to an impossible combination of inner and outer WHERE restrictions.
