Hi,

I am just curious, which would be more optimized... Many small queries, or a few big massive nested queries?

Generally large queries, as it gives the database software a chance to optimize in more places. If you do a bunch of small queries and then do all of your data processing client-side, all those indexes and highly-tuned data-access code won't help you a bit. Just make sure your large queries aren't doing any sequential scans, and it should be faster.

But, as ever, profile your application and decide for yourself.

As long as you can stay on indexes, a few monster queries will be faster. In addition to what error404 mentioned, fewer queries means fewer context switches and shuffling data back and forth between programs (or even boxes).