What's quicker; including another file or querying a MySQL database in PHP?

Question

In PHP, which is quicker; using include(\'somefile.php\') or querying a MySQL database with a simple SELECT query to get the same information?

Answer 1

If this is something you're going to be fetching on a regular basis it might be worthwhile to prefetch the data (from disk or the database, doesn't matter) and have your script pull it from a RAM cache like memcached.