Im in a dilema on which one of these methods are most efficient.
Suppose you have a query joining multiple tables and querying thousand of records. Than, you gotta get the total to paginate throughout all these results.
Is it faster to?
1) Do a complete select (suppose you have to select 50's columns), count the rows and than run another query with limits? (Will the MySQL cache help this case already selecting all the columns you need on the first query used to count?)
2) First do the query using COUNT function and than do the query to select the results you need.
3) Instead of using MySQL COUNT function, do the query selecting the ID's for example and use the PHP function mysql_num_rows?
- I think the number 2 is the best option, using MySQL built in COUNT function, but I know MySQL uses cache, so, selecting all the results on first query gonna be faster?