> And then imagine amount of data sent to server in both cases. I don't
> know client architecture but sql statements are interpreted by a server
> and probably client library transfers them unchanged. So optimizing the
> amount of data received consider also amount of data sent to server. So
> to achive fast data exchange between your app and your db server you
> have to also 'optimize' amount of bytes sent not only received.
> I hope you got the poin here...

If your SQL statement (+overhead) fits in one TCP packet you don't actually have to worry that much about size. I am not sure if Firebird disables the Nagle algorithm, but if it doesn't packets smaller than 200(?) bytes will even hurt you ;)

I think these are micro-optimizations that you should only worry about if you have proven that this is the actual bottleneck. More likely the bottleneck will be somewhere else.
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