What approach to use for large queries

[fastsol]

I am in the process of rebuilding my business sites in the Slim3 MVC framework and using Laravel's Eloquent ORM along with several other dependencies (not that it matters for this question).  I am getting the basic hang of Eloquent and Models.  My old code has lots of full sql queries throughout, most of which I believe I can easily transform into Models and use simple Eloquent processing.  But I have a number of complex queries that either I don't have a clue how to construct with models or can't or maybe shouldn't be done with models.

 

Take these 2 queries for example:

"SELECT
	 `".BRANDS."`.*,
	 `".PRODUCTS."`.*,
	 `".CATEGORIES."`.*,
	 `".BANNERS."`.`banner_name`,
	 `".BANNERS."`.`banner_tag`,
	 `".BANNERS."`.`banner_image`
FROM `".PRODUCTS."`
INNER JOIN `".BRANDS."` ON `".BRANDS."`.`id` = `".PRODUCTS."`.`brand_id`
INNER JOIN `".CAT_RELATION."` ON `".CAT_RELATION."`.`product_id` = `".PRODUCTS."`.`id`
INNER JOIN `".CATEGORIES."` ON `".CATEGORIES."`.`cat_id` = `".CAT_RELATION."`.`category_id`
LEFT JOIN `".BANNERS."` ON `".BANNERS."`.`id` = `".PRODUCTS."`.`banner_id` AND `".BANNERS."`.`active` = TRUE 
WHERE `".PRODUCTS."`.`active`=TRUE ".$where."
GROUP BY `".PRODUCTS."`.`id`
ORDER BY $order_by"

"SELECT `".QUOTE_RESPONSES."`.*,
   `".QUOTE_ITEMS."`.*,
   `".PRODUCTS."`.*,
   `".QUOTE_DEPOSITS."`.`id` AS `deposit_id`,
   `".QUOTE_DEPOSITS."`.`product_id` AS `deposit_prod`,
   `".QUOTE_DEP_RESP."`.`id` as `dep_resp_id`,
   `".QUOTE_REQUESTS."`.`cookie_code`,
   `".QUOTE_REQUESTS."`.`id` as `orig_quote_id`,
   ".CONCAT_VEHICLE." AS `vehicle`,
   `".QUOTE_REQUESTS."`.`vehicle_sufix`,
   `".QUOTE_REQUESTS."`.`name`,
   `".SCH."`.`schedule_id`,
   `".SCH."`.`install_time`,
   `".SCH."`.`cancelled`,
   product_videos.video 
FROM `".QUOTE_RESPONSES."`
INNER JOIN `".QUOTE_ITEMS."` ON `".QUOTE_ITEMS."`.`response_id` = `".QUOTE_RESPONSES."`.`id`
INNER JOIN `".PRODUCTS."` ON `".PRODUCTS."`.`id` = `".QUOTE_ITEMS."`.`product_id`
INNER JOIN `".QUOTE_REQUESTS."` ON `".QUOTE_REQUESTS."`.`id` = `".QUOTE_RESPONSES."`.`request_id`
".VEHICLE_JOIN."
LEFT JOIN `".QUOTE_DEPOSITS."` ON `".QUOTE_DEPOSITS."`.`q_id` = `".QUOTE_RESPONSES."`.`id`
LEFT JOIN `".QUOTE_DEP_RESP."` ON `".QUOTE_DEP_RESP."`.`deposit_id` = `".QUOTE_DEPOSITS."`.`id`
LEFT JOIN `".SCH."` ON `".SCH."`.`deposit_id` = `".QUOTE_DEPOSITS."`.`id`
LEFT JOIN product_videos ON product_videos.id = `".QUOTE_RESPONSES."`.`video_id` AND `product_videos`.`active` = TRUE
WHERE `".QUOTE_RESPONSES."`.`id`=$id AND `code`= ?"

They are big and full of joins and such to minimize query calls and maximize speed with a single query.  Now I totally know how to gather all this info in Eloquent by using multiple queries, but that is going to be a lot of queries instead of 1.

 

I guess my question is: Is it worth trying to figure out how to do this with models or should I just use the Eloquent Query Builder similar to this

$this->DB->table('vehicle_attributes_relation')
	->join('vehicle_attributes', 'vehicle_attributes.v_att_id', '=', 'vehicle_attributes_relation.att_id')
	->join('v_year', 'v_year.id', '=', 'vehicle_attributes_relation.year_id')
	->join('v_model', 'v_model.id', '=', 'vehicle_attributes_relation.model_id')
	->join('v_make', 'v_make.id', '=', 'v_model.v_make_id')
	->select('vehicle_attributes.*', 'v_make.v_make', 'v_model.v_model', 'v_year.v_year')
	->where('is_private', 0)
	->where('vehicle_attributes.v_att_id', $id)
	->orderBy('v_make', 'asc')
	->orderBy('v_model', 'asc')
	->orderBy('v_year', 'asc')
	->get()

I want this rebuild to be fast and efficient like it is now and I'm willing to give up a slight bit of performance and query calls, but I think the performance would be really hurt trying to do these examples in models.  I just don't want to get into the spaghetti of sql code again in this rebuild.