Suggestions on querying parent/child records

[Brent Baisley]

I'm trying to figure out the best approach for doing this query. I have 
a list of action items, typically about 50, that I need to display. 
Each action item will have two related sets of child items (two 
different groups of people). So I need to query three main databases, a 
parent and two children.

One obvious approach would be to query the action items and then run 
two queries for each action item to pull the two separate related child 
items. Then just join then in php for output. But that would always 
mean 2*actions+1 queries every time the page would be viewed. That's a 
lot of database connections.

Another approach is to use a join query on the parent and one child. 
Then run a query for each action to pull the other child data. Again 
joining the data together in php for output. But this means a lot of 
redundant parent data due to the one to many join.

I'm sure there would be a third approach to do it all in one query with 
lots of redundant data, but I haven't sat down with my brain yet (it's 
out to lunch) to talk about that approach. I'm thinking this one may be 
the best for performance even though a lot more data would need to be 
transfered.

Any other ideas or suggestions on optimizing these approaches? Thanks.

--
Brent Baisley
Systems Architect
Landover Associates, Inc.
Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577
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