Performance of recursive stored procedures in MYSQL to get hierarchical data

Question

I have table employee like,
employee ( emp_id int primary key, emp_name varchar(50), mngr_id int)

and here mngr_id would either null or contain valid emp_id. Th

Answer 1

a fairly simple iterative adjacency list db server side solution: http://pastie.org/1056977

delimiter ;

drop procedure if exists employee_hier;

delimiter #

create procedure employee_hier
(
in p_emp_id smallint unsigned
)
begin

declare p_done tinyint unsigned default(0);
declare p_depth smallint unsigned default(0);

create temporary table hier(
 boss_id smallint unsigned, 
 emp_id smallint unsigned, 
 depth smallint unsigned
)engine = memory;

insert into hier values (null, p_emp_id, p_depth);

/* http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/temporary-table-problems.html */

create temporary table emps engine=memory select * from hier;

while p_done <> 1 do

    if exists( select 1 from employee e inner join hier on e.boss_id = hier.emp_id and hier.depth = p_depth) then

        insert into hier select e.boss_id, e.emp_id, p_depth + 1 
            from employee e inner join emps on e.boss_id = emps.emp_id and emps.depth = p_depth;

        set p_depth = p_depth + 1;          

        truncate table emps;
        insert into emps select * from hier where depth = p_depth;

    else
        set p_done = 1;
    end if;

end while;

select 
 e.emp_id,
 e.name as emp_name,
 b.emp_id as boss_emp_id,
 b.name as boss_name,
 hier.depth
from 
 hier
inner join employee e on hier.emp_id = e.emp_id
inner join employee b on hier.boss_id = b.emp_id;

drop temporary table if exists hier;
drop temporary table if exists emps;

end #

delimiter ;


call employee_hier(1);
call employee_hier(3);