Posted by Martin on 01/25/08 22:48

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:27:00 -0800 (PST), ZeldorBlat
<zeldorblat@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Jan 25, 11:25 am, Martin <martinval...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> I have a series of php scripts that provide the user interface to an
>> industrial automation program.
>>
>> One of the scripts serves out a page which displays some data, some
>> of which is constantly changing. On that page, I have some AJAX code
>> running that frequently requests fresh data and displays it
>> (frequently means about once a second).
>>
>> When the php script that services the AJAX requests receives one, it
>> passes a request of its own over to the main process (via a socket)
>> which responds with some data which the script then sends out to the
>> browser page.
>>
>> This all works fine but I'm concerned about the load this exchange of
>> data places in the main process.
>>
>> What I'm wondering is: would it be possible that I could have my main
>> process send its data (in real time) to "something" in the php system
>> such that the php script could access this data much like it accesses
>> its own global variables? IOW, the script would have immediate access
>> to the values instead of having to request them from the main process.
>>
>> Please understand that all of this activity is running on one computer
>> and this is all confined to an inTRAnet (there's no internet access
>> involved). And, this one computer is entirely under my control. I am
>> free to do what ever needs to be done with regards to php
>> configuration, security settings, etc.
>>
>> Any recommendations?
>>
>> Thanks.
>
>Sounds likes a database would work just fine. The main process can
>update values in the database and the PHP script can read them
>whenever it needs to. Or perhaps I'm missing something larger here...

Yes, I agree - a database probably would work ok. But, even then,
there would be a lot of disc activity. I'm thinking that if the data
could be stored in memory somewhere/someway, then the processing time
would be minimized.

I'm also thinking that if the processing time is minimized, then I
could speed up the frequency of the AJAX requests (and thus provide a
more real-time appearance to the viewer's screens).

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