Do I need to add an Index on ORDER BY field?

Question

Yes, index will help you, when using ORDER BY. Because INDEX is a sorted data structure, so the request will be executed faster.

Look at this example: table test2 with 3 rows. I used LIMIT after order by to show the difference in execution.

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `test2`;
CREATE TABLE `test2` (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `value` varchar(10) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_swedish_ci NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `ix_value` (`value`) USING BTREE
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=3 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

-- ----------------------------
-- Records of test2
-- ----------------------------
INSERT INTO `test2` VALUES ('1', '10');
INSERT INTO `test2` VALUES ('2', '11');
INSERT INTO `test2` VALUES ('2', '9');

-- ----------------------------
-- Without INDEX
-- ----------------------------

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM test2 ORDER BY value LIMIT 1\G
*************************** 1. row *************************
           id: 1
  select_type: SIMPLE
        table: test2
         type: ALL
possible_keys: NULL
          key: NULL
      key_len: NULL
          ref: NULL
         rows: 3
        Extra: Using filesort
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

MySQL checked 3 rows to output the result.
After CREATE INDEX, we get this:

mysql> CREATE INDEX ix_value ON test2 (value) USING BTREE;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.14 sec)

-- ----------------------------
-- With INDEX
-- ----------------------------

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM test2 ORDER BY value LIMIT 1\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           id: 1
  select_type: SIMPLE
        table: test2
         type: index
possible_keys: NULL
          key: ix_value
      key_len: 32
          ref: NULL
         rows: 1
        Extra: Using index
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Now MySQL used only 1 row.

Answering the received comments, I tried the same query without LIMIT:

-- ----------------------------
-- Without INDEX
-- ----------------------------

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM test2 ORDER BY value\G
*************************** 1. row ******************
           id: 1
  select_type: SIMPLE
        table: test2
         type: ALL
possible_keys: NULL
          key: NULL
      key_len: NULL
          ref: NULL
         rows: 3
        Extra: Using filesort

-- ----------------------------
-- With INDEX
-- ----------------------------

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM test2 ORDER BY value\G
*************************** 1. row *****************
           id: 1
  select_type: SIMPLE
        table: test2
         type: index
possible_keys: NULL
          key: ix_value
      key_len: 32
          ref: NULL
         rows: 3
        Extra: Using index

As we see, it uses index, for the 2-nd ORDER BY.

To build an index on your field, use this:

CREATE INDEX ix_comment_time ON tbl_comments (comment_time) USING BTREE;

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/create-index.html

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