This access algorithm can be employed when a WHERE clause was converted to several range conditions on different keys combined with AND, and each condition is one of the following:

Here are some examples:

SELECT * FROM innodb_table WHERE primary_key < 10 AND key_col1=20;

SELECT * FROM tbl_name
WHERE (key1_part1=1 AND key1_part2=2) AND key2=2;

The Index Merge intersection algorithm performs simultaneous scans on all used indexes and produces the intersection of row sequences that it receives from the merged index scans.

If all columns used in the query are covered by the used indexes, full table records are not retrieved and (EXPLAIN output contains Using index in Extra field in this case). Here is an example of such query:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t1 WHERE key1=1 AND key2=1;

If the used indexes don't cover all columns used in the query, full records are retrieved only when the range conditions for all used keys are satisfied.

If one of the merged conditions is a condition over a primary key of an InnoDB or BDB table, it is not used for record retrieval, but is used to filter out records retrieved using other conditions.