Way to try multiple SELECTs till a result is available?

Question

What if I want to search for a single row in a table with a decrementing precision, e.g. like this:

SELECT * FROM image WHERE name LIKE \'text\' AND group_id         


        

Answer 1

I don't think there is anything wrong with running these queries separately until you find the result you want. While there are ways to combine these into one query, those end up being more complicated and slower, which isn't what you wanted.

You should run consider running all of the queries in one transaction, probably best in repeatable-read isolation level, so you get consistent results and also avoid the overhead of setting up repeated transactions. If in addition you make judicious use of prepared statements, you will have almost the same overhead as running all three queries in one combined statement.