This is what an index is for on a SQL database. You declare an index on 'published' and and index on 'views' and the engine can now optimize selection of the re

This is what an index is for on a SQL database. You declare an index on 'published' and and index on 'views' and the engine can now optimize selection of the records you requested. Without those indices, the engine must necessarily scan every row of the table at least once. Yes, there are analyzers with the smarts to recognize that indices on particular fields would have helped a given query, but even if the engine's going to auto-create those for you, it then has to scan every row in the table to create the index that first time.