If you find yourself returning very large numbers of rows to the client, you might be doing something wrong - SQL databases are at their most efficient when you

If you find yourself returning very large numbers of rows to the client, you might be doing something wrong - SQL databases are at their most efficient when you select only the columns and rows you need. If you perform aggregation/calculations in the DB, you can potentially save on-the-wire data transfer time (and potentially CPU time on your clients.. though obviously that is shifting the CPU work to the database). Similarly if you find yourself making multiple trips to the database, and then using loops to combine different data sets, you're probably too far on the 'client-side' and should look at using some joins and combination logic on the DB side to get what you need in a single (and likely more efficient) round-trip.