You do indeed use JOINS. The goal is to retrieve exactly the data you require in a single query. Then you get the DB to `EXPLAIN VERBOSE` or similar and ensure

You do indeed use JOINS. The goal is to retrieve exactly the data you require in a single query. Then you get the DB to `EXPLAIN VERBOSE` or similar and ensure that full table scans aren't happening and that you have indexed the columns the query is being filtered on.