Re: SESSIONS vs. MySQL

---- Philip Thompson <philthathril@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all. > > Let me start out by saying, I have STFW and read through the list > archives. Now that that's out of the way. > > To speed up our application, we want to implement using SESSIONs in > some locations. Beforehand, on every page, we would run approximately > 30-40 queries just to get the page setup - user information and other > stuff. Now while we can't take away all of the setup queries, we would > like to reduce the startup number. > > Ok, so I've implemented this in several places where information > basically does not change from page to page. Jumping to the point/ > question... when does it become more inefficient to store lots of > information in SESSION variables than to run several more queries? > Note, we are actually storing sessions in the database - so a read/ > write is required on each page load - it's not file sessions. > > Now I know this can depend on the complexity of the queries and how > much data is actually stored inside the sessions... but initial > thoughts? To give you a number, the strlen of the _SESSION array is > 325463 - which is equivalent to the number of bytes (I think). > > Thanks, > ~Philip We carry a sh!tload of information in our session, without slowing anything down. In fact, it takes the servers longer to run a full query then to use the session information. But we use the $_SESSION information. Our first query sets everything up in the session and we take on from there, and use stuff from the $_SESSION to actually make the rest of the pages faster. 30-40 queries just to set up a page? That's an abomination that shouldn't see the light of day. Anything slower then 2 seconds without any interaction back to the users will be short-lived.... Wolf