# Drupal Performance Tip – 'I’m too young to die' – indexes and SQLs — Liran Tal

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Drupal Performance Tips

Canonical: https://lirantal.com/blog/2014-11-05

![Cover artwork for Drupal Performance Tip – 'I’m too young to die' – indexes and SQLs](/_astro/photo-1468956398224-6d6f66e22c35.BePqp3CW_Zj88Tk.jpg)

*In the spirit of the computer video game [Doom](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom) and its [skill levels](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Skill_level), we’ll review a few ways you can improve your [Drupal](http://drupal.org/) speed performance and optimize for better results and server response time. These tips that we’ll cover may be at times specific to Drupal 6 versions, although you can always learn the best practices from these examples and apply them on your own code base.*

![Doom](https://web.archive.org/web/20141117232040im_/http://adamatomic.com/pics/blog/doom/doom2.jpg)

**Using indexes**, and **proper SQL queries** can boost performance by a huge factor, especially if the affected tables are very big (millions of rows). Take a look at the diff below showing a fix to a not so proper, and ill-advised use of querying the database:

[![drupal\_perf-1](https://web.archive.org/web/20141117232040im_/http://enginx.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/drupal_perf-1.png)](http://enginx.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/drupal_perf-1.png)

The bad performing query took anything between 6 to 60 seconds to run, depending on the data, and database load, and database’s current cache state. The newer query takes milliseconds.

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* * *

Liran Tal is the author of the book [Node.js Secure Coding: Defending Against Command Injection Vulnerabilities](https://www.nodejs-security.com/)

[Start Building Secure Node.js Applications](https://www.nodejs-security.com/)

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