MySQL Reference Manual :: 7.2.11.1 Loose index scan

The most efficient way is when the index is used to directly retrieve the group fields. With this access method, MySQL uses the property of some index types (for example, B-Trees) that the keys are ordered. This property allows use of lookup groups in an index without having to consider all keys in the index that satisfy all WHERE conditions. Since this access method considers only a fraction of the keys in an index, it is called ``loose index scan.'' When there is no WHERE clause, a loose index scan reads as many keys as the number of groups, which may be a much smaller number than all keys. If the WHERE clause contains range predicates (described in Section 7.2.1, “EXPLAIN Syntax (Get Information About a SELECT)”, under the range join type), a loose index scan looks up the first key of each group that satisfies the range conditions, and again reads the least possible number of keys. This is possible under the following conditions:

The EXPLAIN output for such queries shows Using index for group-by in the Extra column.

The following queries provide several examples that fall into this category, assuming there is an index idx(c1, c2, c3) on table t1(c1,c2,c3,c4):

SELECT c1, c2 FROM t1 GROUP BY c1, c2;
SELECT DISTINCT c1, c2 FROM t1;
SELECT c1, MIN(c2) FROM t1 GROUP BY c1;
SELECT c1, c2 FROM t1 WHERE c1 < const GROUP BY c1, c2;
SELECT MAX(c3), MIN(c3), c1, c2 FROM t1 WHERE c2 > const GROUP BY c1, c2;
SELECT c2 FROM t1 WHERE c1 < const GROUP BY c1, c2;
SELECT c1, c2 FROM t1 WHERE c3 = const GROUP BY c1, c2;

The following queries cannot be executed with this quick select method, for the reasons given: