Re: Sessio variables and Load Balancing

I just took a look at those slashdot articles. Interesting information.

If you're using MySQL or a well-tuned Oracle install, this won't be a big deal at all. Retrieving a record on an indexed column is extremely fast. If the single query necessary to retrieve a session's data measurably affects your site performance, your database is either severely underspeced or your DBA should be fired for gross incompetence.

Of course it's fast, but I'm not just talking about query speed, there is more to it than that. Mysql (or Oracle) might be able to return results blazingly fast, but it's going to use as much memory and processor time as it can to do that. What about the number of processes it will take to serve all needed requests? What about the extra connections it would have to create to serve peak times? All that is going to take memory and

processor time.    What is you idea of spec? Quad Xenon w/ 2BG of RAM?  A database server that is perfectly suited to normal website operations might not be able to properly handle the load if you just indiscriminately started increasing the queries by a factor of 2 or more.   Doesn't sound like it's the DBA's fault at all.. sounds like the programmer didn't consider what the impact of his design would be.

Daniel