Subqueries vs joins

Question

I refactored a slow section of an application we inherited from another company to use an inner join instead of a subquery like:

WHERE id IN (SELECT id FROM          


        

Answer 1

This question is somewhat general, so here's a general answer:

Basically, queries take longer when MySQL has tons of rows to sort through.

Do this:

Run an EXPLAIN on each of the queries (the JOIN'ed one, then the Subqueried one), and post the results here.

I think seeing the difference in MySQL's interpretation of those queries would be a learning experience for everyone.