Re: [PHP] Whats more efficient? (Conclusion)

Hey,
thanks for replying.

/*
....but you can still overcome this with some good server-side
caching (for example, is it necessary to dynamically generate a response for
every request if the data isn't very volatile?).
*/

My main pages are basically querying the databases for hosting plans
depending on what the client chooses....
what do you suggest? and any urls for reading up on caching?

Thanks,
-Ryan

--- Ryan A <ryan@coinpass.com> wrote:
> My main pages are basically querying the databases for hosting plans
> depending on what the client chooses....
> what do you suggest? and any urls for reading up on caching?

Caching is a generic term, so it's tough to search for documentation about a
specific type of caching.

The type I am referring to is a lot like how Slashdot works. Imagine if they
queried the database and generated every single page (with mod_perl) for every
single request. That would take a lot of resources to sustain, right? But, they
only have a handful of servers.

Most of their popular content (like the front page) are generated on the server
at regular intervals, not at request time. So, when you request the front page,
you get a static document, even though the content is dynamic. This is why you
will notice a slight delay in refreshes (number of posts, etc.).

This is a good way to take control of the load on your server. If you generate
a page once per minute, that page will only be generated 525,600 times (I
enjoyed Rent, if you're wondering if I calculated that). Compare this to
millions of generations a day, and you can see how you can significantly reduce
the amount of resources you need. The site I currently operate gets 10 million
hits a day, which works out to about 3.5 billion hits a year. So, I could
generate content once a second, and it would still be better than doing it once
per request.

That wasn't the greatest explanation, but hopefully you get the idea.

Chris

=====
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On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Ryan A wrote:

> what do you suggest? and any urls for reading up on caching?

Some benchmarks on content and bytecode caching:

http://www.appelsiini.net/~tuupola/a...hmarking-phpa/

--
Mika Tuupola http://www.appelsiini.net/~tuupola/