Question

I am working with a rather large database of information now and some queries return quite a hefty amount of information. From what I have read, foreach() is quicker than using while() loops with larger arrays, but that can’t be used with mysql functions.

So as a general question, which of the 3 is faster for large databases which feth 1000s of rows with quite a lot of data? mysql, mysqli or PDO?

Thanks!

Answer 1

mysql shouldn’t be used since it’s outdated and has been superseded by mysqli. As for the differences between mysqli and PDO, consider these:

Reasons to use mysqli

• Should be slightly faster.
• Easier, especially if you’re familiar with the mysql extension, since it is quite similar.

Reasons to use PDO

• Much easier to transition to other databases.
• More features (eg. named parameters in prepared statements, object mapping).