In what scenarios would using a loop to query all tables in a database be considered an overkill in PHP development?

Querying all tables in a database using a loop can be considered overkill in PHP development when you only need information from specific tables or when the database contains a large number of tables, leading to unnecessary processing and potential performance issues. In such scenarios, it's more efficient to directly query the specific tables you need information from.

// Connect to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Query specific tables instead of looping through all tables
$tables_to_query = ['table1', 'table2', 'table3'];

foreach($tables_to_query as $table) {
    $sql = "SELECT * FROM $table";
    $result = $conn->query($sql);

    if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
        while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
            // Process data from specific tables
        }
    }
}

// Close database connection
$conn->close();