Prepared statement (php/mysqli) ...does it really make sense ?

[kapil_israni]

I am a Java/J2EE developer and am considering PHP/MySQL for a project, so I am looking at the whole php/MySQL architecture. And one question that i wanted to know is how does prepared statement really benefit in case of mysqli when theres no connection pooling(in msqli).

I mean unless you call the same query against the same connection object/link multiple times, I dont see how prepared statement is of much use(specially in terms of efficiency). In fact the prepared statement might end up being slower??

Also, another quick question(on server-side prepare statement)...i wanted to know...if with mysql 4.1+/mysqli - all resultsets are of type MYSQLI_STORE_RESULT and not MYSQLI_USE_RESULT. Basically if i use a "prepare statement" to execute a SELECT query, does all data gets buffered to the client by default ?? Is there a way switch this behavior off ?