Re: Question on response time, SQL vs. PHP

It's faster to use count(*), because it just has to fetch a count of the rows (but not the rows themselves). If you're retrieving the rows anyway, you should use mysql_num_rows, Liam Gibbs wrote:

I'm trying to do a count(*) in SQL. Would it be faster to do a or b below? a: just do a simple query, and use mysql_num_rows() to return the row count; or b: do the count(*) and use mysql_fetch_row() to return the result. I guess it would have to do more with SQL response time (is it faster to grab the count and then the row, or all rows in question and then do a count in PHP).

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