php - JOINS vs. Group_Concat() - multiple one to many relationships -

i have table posts has 1 many relationship multiple tables (files , categories in simplified example below). posts has many fields returns each row.

if returning 1000 rows of posts , have 4 files , 3 categories per post, 12000 records in result set (duplicating post info in order give me file info). grows , grows each 1 many relationship.

below shows on simplified version of current join , contemplated group_concat() version. group_concat method simplify php handling tremendously.

comments on performance of these 2 methods?

update realize main concern join method not php code, server memory (& cpu resources?) consumed processing larger result set. each row can have significant amount of data since have type text field.

using joins

select p.postid, title, fileid, filename, category posts p left join files f on f.postid = p.postid left join categories c on c.postid = p.postid 

using group_concat()

select p.postid, title, (     select group_concat(         concat_ws(",", fileid, filename)         separator ';')          files f f.postid = p.postid     ) fileinfo     select group_concat(category)          categories cat.postid = p.postid     ) catinfo posts p