Order of condition execution in MySQL

Question

Suppose I have a MySQL query with two conditions:

SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `field_1` = 1 AND `field_2` LIKE '%term%';

The first condition is obviously going to be a lot cheaper than the second, so I'd like to be sure that it runs first, limiting the pool of rows which will be compared with the LIKE clause. Do MySQL query conditions run in the order they're listed or, if not, is there a way to specify order?

Answer 1

The optimiser will evaluate the WHERE conditions in the order it sees fit.

SQL is declarative: you tell the optimiser what you want, not how to do it.

In a procedural/imperative language (.net, Java, php etc) then you say how and would choose which condition is evaluated first.

Note: "left to right" does apply in certain expressions like (a+b)*c as you'd expect