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+
+---
+parent: How To
+---
+# Optimize DB Queries
+
+### Areas of Focus
+
+- REST APIs
+- Bulk operations (e.g. celery tasks)
+
+### Causes of bad performance
+
+- Missing DB indexes (sorting and filtering)
+- N+1 queries (these will compound on each other)
+ - DB queries in serializer methods (excluding `create()`, `update()`, and validators)
+
+### Patterns
+
+For the below patterns, presume the following models as a starting point:
+
+```python
+from django.db import models
+
+class Company(models.Model):
+    name = models.CharField()
+
+class Employee(models.Model):
+    name = models.CharField()
+    retired = models.BooleanField(default=False)
+    employer = models.ForeignKey(Company, related_name="employees")
+```
+
+#### Additional selections
+
+This strategy correlates to the `QuerySet.select_related()` method. It results in a `JOIN` so it can also be detrimental to performance if it's overused. It is useful to models for which there is a 1-1 relationship.
+
+Example:
+
+```python
+# 1 db query
+Employee.objects.select_related("employer")
+```
+
+#### Prefetching
+
+Prefetching optimizes away N+1 issues by bulk fetching nested data within a query. It is applied by using the `QuerySet.prefetch_related` method.
+
+Basic example:
+
+```python
+Company.objects.prefetch_related("employees")
+```
+
+A more complex example would be if we want to limit the list of employees to those that aren't retired:
+
+```python
+companies = Company.objects.prefetch_related(
+    Prefetch("employees", Employee.objects.filter(retired=False))
+)
+for company in companies:
+    for employee in company.active_employees.all():
+        print(employee.name)
+```
+
+An even better solution is to put this on a different property so we leave `employees` unfiltered:
+
+```python
+companies = Company.objects.prefetch_related(
+    Prefetch("employees", Employee.objects.filter(retired=False), to_attr="active_employees")
+)
+
+for company in companies:
+    for employee in company.active_employees.all():
+        print(employee.name)
+```
+
+Rounding out these examples, since we're now assigning to a separate property, we can update our `Company` model with a custom property to take advantage of this:
+
+```python
+class Company:
+    ...
+    @cached_property
+    def active_employees(self):
+        # if we've prefetched to _active_employees, use that
+        if hasattr(self, "_active_employees"):
+            return self._active_employees
+
+        # otherwise fallback to the slower but still accurate N+1 queries
+        return self.employees.filter(retired=False)
+
+# both these queries result in the name correctly filtered active_employees list but perform differently
+# this ensures we always have correct data but ideally we've prefetched it
+# performs N+1 queries
+Company.objects.all()
+
+# performs 2 queries
+Company.objects.prefetch_related(
+    Prefetch("employees", Employee.objects.filter(retired=False), to_attr="_active_employees")
+)
+
+
+```