Which SQL statement is faster?

Question

Which SQL statement is faster?

SELECT TOP 2 c1.Price, c2.Price, ..... c49.Price, c50.Price
FROM Table1 AS c1, Table2 AS c2, ..... Table49 AS c49, Table50 AS c50
WHERE c1.Date = c2.Date AND c2.Date = c3.Date ..... c49.Date = c50.Date
ORDER BY c1.ID DESC

        OR

SELECT TOP 2 c1.Price, c2.Price, ..... c49.Price, c50.Price
FROM (Table1 AS c1 
 INNER JOIN (Table2 AS c2 
    ........
  INNER JOIN (Table49 AS c49
   INNER JOIN Table50 AS c50
  ON c49.Date = c50.Date)
    ........
 ON c2.FullDate__ = c3.FullDate__)
ON c1.FullDate__ = c2.FullDate__)
ORDER BY c1.ID DESC";   

Basically I need to extract 2 rows from each table to produce a summary periodically. Which statement is faster?

Answer 1

What is faster is not having 50 tables to start with. Joining 50 tables might be ok, but it's a highly counter-intuitive design and probably not the most maintainable solution.

Can you not store your data in rows (or columns) of a single (or fewer) tables rather than 50 tables??!