Dave Stokes: Improving the performance of database queries is often seen as a Harry Potter-ish dark art. In reality it is simple engineering and revolves around providing the query optimizer the best information about your data! And how do you do that? Well, you can start with properly planned indexes and histograms. We will also venture into some other areas that will help you speed up your queries.

Dave Stokes is a MySQL Community Manager for Oracle and the author of 'MySQL & JSON - A Practical Programming Guide'.