Database query speed improvement

Question

I have the following table structure

term_id     int(11)             
concept_id  int(11)             
idf     double          

And I have arround 2.4 milions records. When I perform the following query

stmt = con.prepareStatement("SELECT term, idf.idf FROM idf "
                          + "JOIN term ON term.id=idf.term_id "
                          + "WHERE concept_id= ?");
stmt.setInt(1, id);
res = stmt.executeQuery();

It takes about 3 seconds for a query. I am using MySQL Connector and I am performing this query from java code/eclipse. Could I improve this speed ?
If a try performing a query directly in phpMyAdmin I have the following time results:

Records 18,869 total Time : 0.4204 sec

SELECT term, idf.idf
FROM idf
JOIN term ON term.id = idf.term_id
WHERE concept_id = 4

Answer 1

The problem is in this line:

Records 18,869 total Time : 0.4204 sec

You are trying to push 18,869 records from the remote host to your local client.
Of course you don't need 18k records, who was the time to read all that?

So you probably only need the top few rows.
Or you need to do further processing.

Get top 100 rows

SELECT term.*, idf.idf
FROM idf
JOIN term ON term.id = idf.term_id
WHERE concept_id = 4
ORDER BY term.id
LIMIT 100;

Store the data in a memory table for further processing

INSERT INTO mem_idfterm 
  SELECT term.*, idf.idf
  FROM idf
  JOIN term ON term.id = idf.term_id
  WHERE concept_id = 4
  ORDER BY term.id;

And than do a further select from mem_idfterm,
or use the (now infamous) select as a subselect to extract more data from.

Try to never push more than 1000 rows across the network.

Finally you can get the data in batches:

SELECT term.*, idf.idf
...
LIMIT 0, 100;  -- first batch

SELECT term.*, idf.idf
...
LIMIT 100, 100; -- second batch 

etc.

I recommend using an order by clause when using limit. And if you must have consistent results, do all the piecemeal selects in a single transaction.

Answer 2

Creating proper index On the table on term_id, concept_I'd