Which is faster / more efficient - lots of little MySQL queries or one big PHP array?

Question

I have a PHP/MySQL based web application that has internationalization support by way of a MySQL table called language_strings with the string_id,

Answer 1

I'm with Fluffeh on this: look into other options at your disposal (joins, subqueries, make sure your indexes reflect the relativity of the data -but don't over index and test). Most likely you'll end up with an array at some point, so here's a little performance tip, contrary to what you might expect, stuff like

$all = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

is less memory efficient compared too:

$all = array();//or $all = []; in php 5.4
while($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
{
    $all[] = $row['lang_string '];
}

What's more: you can check for redundant data while fetching the data.