erlang - how can I match tuple contents with qlc and mnesia?

Question

I have a mnesia table for this record.

-record(peer, {
    peer_key,   %% key is the tuple {FileId, PeerId}
    last_seen,
    last_event,
    uploaded = 0,
    downloaded = 0,
    left = 0,
    ip_port,
    key
}).

Peer_key is a tuple {FileId, ClientId}, now I need to extract the ip_port field from all peers that have a specific FileId.

I came up with a workable solution, but I'm not sure if this is a good approach:

qlc:q([IpPort || #peer{peer_key={FileId,_}, ip_port=IpPort} <- mnesia:table(peer), FileId=:=RequiredFileId])

Thanks.

Answer 1

Using on ordered_set table type with a tuple primary key like { FileId, PeerId } and then partially binding a prefix of the tuple like { RequiredFileId, _ } will be very efficient as only the range of keys with that prefix will be examined, not a full table scan. You can use qlc:info/1 to examine the query plan and ensure that any selects that are occurring are binding the key prefix.