In what ways can the use of JOIN statements improve the performance and efficiency of PHP scripts that interact with a MySQL database?

Using JOIN statements in SQL queries can improve the performance and efficiency of PHP scripts by reducing the number of queries needed to retrieve related data from multiple tables. Instead of making separate queries for each table, JOIN statements allow you to combine data from different tables into a single result set, reducing the overall processing time and network overhead.

<?php
// Establish a connection to the MySQL database
$connection = mysqli_connect("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Query using JOIN statement to retrieve data from multiple tables
$query = "SELECT users.username, orders.order_id FROM users JOIN orders ON users.user_id = orders.user_id";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Process the result set
if(mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0) {
    while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
        echo "Username: " . $row['username'] . " | Order ID: " . $row['order_id'] . "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "No results found.";
}

// Close the connection
mysqli_close($connection);
?>