First, it's not that placeholders provide a performance boost (I'd expect a decline, actually, but...).. but they *are* important in the detainting and security of your database. Even if your server doesn't support placeholders, this is still the sanest thing to use when you can, since if the server doesn't have placeholders, the functionality is replicated by the appropriate DBI glue. This also applies to prepare_cached(); if the database server doesn't support it, it will do it's best to handle it in any case; in cases where it doesn't, it simply will pass prepare_cached() to prepare().

But in the situation I was talking about, I was more thinking about the penalty of creating a hash to pass, parsing the SQL, accessing the hash and calling prepare & execute all in a separate area, as opposed to calling prepare & execute without extra baggage. AGain, I doubt it's much, and the small hit may be more than outweighed by the ease of programming in such a fashion.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain