What are the potential reasons for the significant difference in memory usage between PDO and mysqli when executing the same query?

The significant difference in memory usage between PDO and mysqli when executing the same query could be due to the way each extension handles memory allocation and result set retrieval. PDO may be more memory-efficient in certain scenarios compared to mysqli. To address this issue, you can try optimizing your query, fetching results in smaller chunks, or using prepared statements to reduce memory overhead.

// Example code snippet using PDO with prepared statements to reduce memory usage
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE mycolumn = :value');
$stmt->bindParam(':value', $myValue);
$stmt->execute();

while ($row = $stmt->fetch()) {
    // Process each row
}