Query slow in PHP but fast in client - php

Question

Me and our team are experiencing a strange problem with MySQL queries. We use a SELECT statement with a COUNT and for some reason it's quite 'fast' in the client we use (SQLyog), but it's realy slow when we use PHP.
We have tried to use the ancient mysql_query(), the mysqli extension and we also tried to use PDO but all didn't make a difference.
On other posts here on Stackoverflow we found that it might be a DNS issue and that it could be fixed using 'skip_name_resolve' in the my.ini but we already had this in our configuration.
Timed results:
Client: 2.092 sec
PHP: 9.1071 sec
This is the query we use:
SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE
COUNT(m.mm_id) AS total
FROM
db.media_multimedia m
WHERE m.cat_id IN
(SELECT
mc.cat_id
FROM
db.media_multimedia_category mc
WHERE mc.cat_active = 1)
AND m.mm_published = 1
AND (
m.mm_title LIKE "%denniy%"
OR m.mm_text LIKE "%denniy%"
OR m.mm_id IN
(SELECT
a.mm_id
FROM
db.`media_tag_multimedia` a
LEFT JOIN media.`media_tag` b
ON a.`tag_id` = b.tag_id
WHERE b.tag_name LIKE "%denniy%")
)
AND m.mm_publishing_date >= "2012-04-24 00:00:00"
AND m.mm_publishing_date <= "2013-04-24 23:59:59" ;
*NOTE: for this testcase we added SQL_NO_CACHE to the query to make sure we always fetch a new result set.*
We are using the following PHP and MYSQL versions:
MySQL: 5.1.61
PHP: 5.3.3
Any suggestions to fix this problem?

Answer 1

I can't explain the difference in performance, although if I had to guess I'd say one or some of the following things are in play:
The server is optimising your query differently because of the different client connections,
The different location of your SQLyog and PHP clients might be a factor
Like I said, just guesses.
But regardless, I've attempted to tidy up your query as follows. I wonder if this might perform better (and more consistently)?
SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE
COUNT(m.mm_id) AS total
FROM
db.media_multimedia m
INNER JOIN db.media_multimedia_category mc
ON m.cat_id = mc.cat_id
AND mc.cat_active = 1
LEFT JOIN db.media_tag_multimedia a
ON m.mm_id = a.mm_id
INNER JOIN media.media_tag b
ON a.tag_id = b.tag_id
WHERE
m.mm_published = 1
AND
(
m.mm_title LIKE "%denniy%"
OR
m.mm_text LIKE "%denniy%"
OR
b.tag_name LIKE "%denniy%"
)
AND m.mm_publishing_date >= "2012-04-24 00:00:00"
AND m.mm_publishing_date <= "2013-04-24 23:59:59" ;