I am creating a catalog item display page and the data I must pull to list the items in the catalog is complicated by the fact that the query must pull from multiple tables to assemble the output ( name and other elements from 'item table', elements from a related items table, other things from a pricing table...)
My main concern is... how efficient will this be when the database gets larger as it is populated more and more?
Is it generally better to do one complex query to pull all the data needed at once...
...rather than have a simple query loop ( for the item table ) that must then send query's at each item (to lookup the related items table, and pricing table)?
I guess my question is... is one way more efficient than the other? or are they both going to be about the same in efficiency?
