Should I use one big SQL Select statement or several small ones?

Question

I\'m building a PHP page with data sent from MySQL.

Is it better to have

• 1 SELECT query with 4 table joins, or
• 4 small SELE

Answer 1

Be careful when dealing with a merge table however. It has been my experience that although a single join can be good in most situations, when merge tables are involved you can run into strange situations.