Here are results of running the scripts against the database of 90,000 statements - 34 queries, in about .3 seconds.
It retrieves all distinct properties, then loops through and retrieves all distinct values for those properties.
The punchline : after a number of tests, prepared queries at this point are only slightly faster. I may cache the tuple query in quercus APC - but for now, the regular queries are sufficiently fast.
COUNT of 33 DISTINCT TOTAL PROPERTIES