What are some alternative methods or libraries that can be used in PHP for sorting and displaying data from databases more efficiently?

When dealing with large amounts of data from databases in PHP, it's important to efficiently sort and display the data to avoid performance issues. One alternative method is using the PHP Data Object (PDO) extension to interact with the database, which can provide better performance compared to traditional methods like mysql_query. Additionally, using libraries like Laravel's Eloquent ORM can simplify the process of retrieving and sorting data from databases.

// Using PDO to connect to a database and retrieve sorted data
$dsn = 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase';
$username = 'username';
$password = 'password';

try {
    $pdo = new PDO($dsn, $username, $password);
    $stmt = $pdo->query('SELECT * FROM mytable ORDER BY column_name');
    
    while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
        // Display data
        echo $row['column_name'] . '<br>';
    }
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo 'Connection failed: ' . $e->getMessage();
}