CakePHP query - Unexpected big delay - mysql

Question

It annoys me that the following query when fired up by an AJAX request takes 1 second to process where as when called during page refresh(synchronous) takes merely 2 ms. I have spent hours tracking down what goes wrong but I am helpless. I have tried Model->read, Model->find, Model->query() yet it takes the same amount of time. I think 1 second for a simple query like this is not natural. May be the CakePHP models wasting too much resources and time. But my instincts say it's related to query cache.
protected function _user_info($id= NULL){
//benchmarking
$time = -microtime(true);
if(!$id){
if($this->Auth->loggedIn())
$id = $this->Auth->user('id');
else
return NULL;
}
$this->loadModel('User');
/*$findOptions = array('conditions'=>array('User.id'=>$id),
'fields'=>'User.id, User.name, User.email, User.role, dp',
'limit'=>1,
'recursive'=>-1);
$r = $this->User->find('first', $findOptions);
*/
$r = $this->User->query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = '".$id."' LIMIT 1");
$time += microtime(true);
echo '<h1>'.$time.'</h1>'; //out- time taken for the query
return $r['User'];
}
Any kind of help would be awesome!

Answer 1

First, try normal Cake search style:
// You should have containable
$this->User->contain();
$r = $this->User->find('first',array('conditions'=>array('id'=>$id)));
Test it.
Cheers.

Answer 2

If you're on debug 2 you're not counting execution times but debugging overhead also.
With debug enabled cache won't be used for long which will mean the DB will be asked to DESCRIBE the table, an sql log will be created, expensive object reflection might be requested multiple times especially if you hit warnings, exceptions or non fatal errors and all this will take considerably longer.