Is this a good idea? Counting rows in MYSQL using several Group by queries.

[Tea_J]

I have the following table with columns:

outbox
outbox-> id (pri/index)
outbox-> email
outbox-> mobile_no (char 12)
outbox-> category (members/leaders)
outbox-> channel (A/B/C)
outbox-> send_status (pending/sent/declined)

I need to display the counts of the above data to answer the questions:

1) How many outbox items belong to each category
2) How many outbox items belong to each channel
3) How many outbox items are in each send_status

So instead of doing multiple SELECT count (id) WHERE clauses I figured GROUP BY would be better. But I don't see a way to do it in 1 SQL statement .. so instead i have the following:

I have the following:
SELECT category , count(id) AS total_msgs FROM outbox GROUP BY (category );
SELECT channel , count(id) AS total_msgs FROM outbox GROUP BY (channel);
SELECT send_status, count(id) AS total_msgs FROM outbox GROUP BY (send_status);

I just wanted to run this by you guys and see what you thought of it.

PS
I do have a stats table that is regularly updated so no need to suggest that.

[NogDog]

You could put them into a UNION, though I don't know if that would really save you much time on the DB server:

(SELECT 'category', category , count(id) AS total_msgs FROM outbox GROUP BY (category ))
UNION
(SELECT 'channel', channel , count(id) AS total_msgs FROM outbox GROUP BY (channel))
UNION
(SELECT 'send status', send_status, count(id) AS total_msgs FROM outbox GROUP BY (send_status))

[laserlight]

I think three separate SQL queries would be fine.

[Tea_J]

@

thanks , i will ahve to try this but i dont think it's gonna improve anything, not significantly at least

@Laser light
thanks for the affirmation

Regards to all