PM system load on server

[MattG]

Is there any way I can test this?

I'll admit to being a bit lacking in knowledge in regards to how much stress/load things have on the database but if I have it checking for PMs for the user every time they load a new page is that going to cause more strain than necessary on the database/server or is the effect going to be minimal and is there a better way to do it?

At the moment it's just a case of it querying the database with the code below on each page the user loads and if there's an unread message/s for that user it will add echo the number.

$db = mysql_connect($dbhost,$dbuser,$dbpass);
  mysql_select_db($dbname,$db);
  $result = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) as newpms FROM private_messages WHERE to_id = '{$userid}' AND viewed = 'N'",$db);
  $record = @mysql_fetch_array($result);
  if($record[newpms] != 0)
   echo '<b>('.$record[newpms].')</b>';
 mysql_close($db) or die("Error: ".mysql_error());

Thanks

[cgraz]

Depends on how much traffic your site is running, your server's resources, size of the database, table indexes, etc.

Why do you suspect that this query is what's running slow? Is this the only query you're running on the page? Are you calling mysql_connect() multiple times per page load?

You may also try running an EXPLAIN SELECT... in phpmyadmin or from the command line to see how mysql is running this query.