Posted by Marek Kilimajer on 10/04/47 11:08

trlists@clayst.com wrote:
> I have a multi-page form which I build up and store in session
> variables. The data saved includes all an internal list of items on
> the form (derived from a database table), all the form field specs
> (derived from the internal item list), the data for the fields (from
> another table), default data for restting the form (from yet another
> table), and a data structure for my forms class.

How often is the form used? 1000 times a day? Then don't care about it.

>
> It adds up to about 250KB in the actual session file -- that is, the
> serialized data.

As long as it does not reach memory limit it's ok.

>
> I'm not clear of the impact this will have in performance when it's in
> a multi-user environment, and I'm not sure at what point the overhead
> of serializing and unserializing gets to be more than the overhead of
> sticking this stuff in a temporary database table and then retrieving
> it. Serializing is simpler but my git says there has to be a point at
> which it gets inefficient. Testing is complex since I would have to
> write all the database code in order to do any performance measurement.

The difference is really irrelevant and as long as you don't code for
multi-thousand dollar machines it does not matter. The effort you would
put in the code would not give back.

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