> My standard example why it sometimes does matter: PersonDAO.fetchAll().size() is silly because it forces the database to fetch all Person objects, send them o

> My standard example why it sometimes does matter: PersonDAO.fetchAll().size() is silly because it forces the database to fetch all Person objects, send them over the network, your application creates the necessary objects for them - and then you throw it all away again because all you needed was the number of people. PersonDAO.count() is much better, even if you have to implement it yourself. I mean, PersonDAO.fetchAll().size() is just bad code. You probably need to know how to write ifs properly before programming? You need to know about databases before using an ORM.