Why Do My Aurora MySQL Views Time Out While Table Queries Work?

The view definition probably isn’t the root problem; it may be hiding an expensive SELECT. Run EXPLAIN on the underlying query and check for full table scans, large temporary tables, filesorts, and whether filters are being pushed down. Also verify that the columns used for joins and filtering are indexed. DISTINCT can require scanning and deduplicating a very large intermediate result, especially when the filtered conditions cannot use indexes effectively.

A timeout does not necessarily mean Aurora cannot support the view. Check the query execution time, temporary-table usage, available memory, and server metrics while it runs. Make sure the query has selective predicates and that those predicates can use indexes on the base tables. If the result is inherently large, consider pagination, narrowing the selected columns, or precomputing the aggregation rather than moving the workload to an unrelated data store.

Try rewriting the query without nested views so you can see the complete execution plan. Compare the plan for the view with the plan for the underlying SELECT, and test it against a local copy if possible. If the inner result is expensive but relatively stable, materializing it into a summary table and refreshing it periodically may work better than calculating the DISTINCT or aggregates on every request.