Re: Declaring SERVER-WIDE Variables & UNSERIALIZE overhead

Simon: Thanks for the SHMEM heads-up. It's defiantly a step up in efficiency/speed than calling the databases, however, I wonder about the overhead of loading and unserializing on every page. Another issue is portability -- while the servers here are MacOS X and Linux-based, future systems may be Windows clunkers, where SHMEM isn't an option. I'm going to have to send a message/feature request to the developer list as well.. maybe they'll have more insight, or will be able to run with my request/tell me why it's bad. --- Michael David The Miller Group Web-based software for Schools http://www.miller-group.net > From: "Simon Garner" <sgarner@expio.co.nz> > Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 15:59:39 +1300 > To: "Michael David" <michaeld@miller-group.net>, > <php-general@lists.php.net> > Subject: Re: [PHP] Declaring SERVER-WIDE Variables > > Hi Michael, > > I've never used it myself, but this may be of some use: > > http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.shmop.php > > If I understand it correctly, this lets you write a string into an area of > memory which can be accessed from any process - i.e. another httpd process. > > If you wanted to save an array you would need to serialize() it first. > > > Cheers > > Simon Garner > > > From: "Michael David" <michaeld@miller-group.net> > >> Greetings, fellow PHP hackers! >> >> The current project I'm working on is porting software written in Tango to >> PHP4. Because these programs heavily rely on information held in > (off-site) >> databases, the tango programs were written to have a set of array > variables >> declared from SQL queries, which then any user hitting the site would have >> access to. >> >> Ie... >> >> User 1 hits the webapge.. the server realizes this is the first user and >> populates the arrays with data from the source database. The page is able >> to use these arrays. >> >> User 2 hits the webpage.. the server already has the arrays packed with >> data, and user 2 is able to hit the pages quickly, due to no queries being >> made. All users are this way. >> >> Some events would require that these arrays be re-hashed such as when a > user >> updates, inserts or changes the value of an item in the database. These >> changes. >> >> When this update happens, the changes would be made to the server-wide >> variables, so ANY user on the machine (independant of sessions) would have >> the fresh data when it next pulls from the arrays. >> >> .... >> >> Ideally, this would be like settings HTTP_SERVER_VARS[school_array] to >> contain the data, where every page would have $school_array there without >> any additional work, and a refresh being a small function that creates the >> arrays needed and sticks them into HTTP_SERVER_VARS[array_name]. (Along > the >> lines of PHP_SELF, but not dynamic in that sense.) >> >> Some of this could be handled with sessions, but my concern is that > carrying >> ALL of this data with each user is a waste of resources, and will require >> more database calls than needed. >> >> If anyone has ANY ideas, PLEASE share them! :) >> >> Regards, >> >> Michael >> >> >> --- >> Michael David >> The Miller Group >> Web-based software for Schools >> http://www.miller-group.net >> >> >> -- >> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net >> For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net >> To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net >> >