Is it faster to query by doing greater than or doing multiple equals?

[Niheel]

We have a large table with lots or rows. One of the columns has the values either 0,1,2.

Is it faster to do a query such as

WHERE columnid > 0

or

WHERE columid=1 OR columid=2

[Curtis Rutland]

I would guess the first, since the tests would have the same weight, and there's only one of them. I don't know if MySql does short-circuit logic, but even if so, for every "2", you're doing two tests instead of one. Unless there's something strange that I'm not aware of.

[Atli]

I did a small test and it seems to back up what Curtis said. The > 0 method was consistently 15% - 20% faster. Doing IN(1, 2) was also faster, but not as fast.

[Niheel]

Thanks @atli, that's what we ended up going with :) It made world of difference in speed.