Query locking tables and stacking queries - need help understanding

[kh99]

Originally Posted by starl

archive/index.php.. sounds like somethat's archiving? If that's the case, why would it archive old threads and not just the newer? Or is it, but it's sorting by date first?

I have to admit that I don't understand the archive. I have a test site that I simply installed in the default way, and it has an "archive" link at the bottom, and when I click it it shows the forums but in a simplified format. I don't know if that means it's just another way to display the forum, or if it's automatically being "archived". I'm sure someone else will know.

I don't understand " there's no index by the open or visible columns"

I should point out that I'm not an sql expert or anything, but when you have a large database, the speed of a given query depends a lot on what the query is doing and what indexes you have defined for a table (in the case of vbulletin, they've been defined ahead of time by the programmers, so I don't really mean "you"). All that crap i wrote was just saying that I think that particular query is slow because there's no index it can use to avoid reading a lot of rows, and you have a lot of threads.

Any idea what makes the query run?

I believe it just runs whenever anyone goes to the archive folder (if you can't find a link at the bottom of your home page, try just going to archive/index.php). In particular it looks like that query is from someone requesting page 731 or so from the list of threads in a forum (with 250 threads per page).

With your reference to spiders, it sounds like they may be responsible?

I just know that we constantly have spiders crawling the archive on our site, and I don't think humans are usually interested in the archive. I don't know of any other way to stop them, but I'm not an expert on that either.


Re-reading the above, I realize that I'm not an expert in much at all, so I'm not sure I've done anything other than producing more questions. But other people here will know more, and you could also ask on vbulletin.com, if you haven't already.