title: Use prepared statements everywhere in PHP? (PDO)
body: <p>I'm going to be switching my database class that I use in several sites/projects, from using a custom mysql_query method*, to using PDO and prepared statements. However I have a question first - do I want to use prepared statements <strong>everywhere</strong>? Even in places where the query will only be ran once? What about situations where I need to do something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>INSERT INTO `table` (`column`, `column`) VALUES ('value','value'), ('value','value'),('value','value'), etc.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Should I use a single prepared statement (And a single VALUE), but execute it with different variables each time, or should I use the style above? If I do use a prepared statement here, how bad of a performance hit are we talking? Do I need to use transactions in this situation?</p>
  
  <p>*My mysql_query method is similar to a prepared statement in that the user can call <code>$mysql-&gt;Query("SELECT * FROM</code>%s<code>WHERE '%s'='%s'", $var, $var, $var)</code>, and the method auto-escapes everything with <code>mysql_real_escape_string</code>. </p>