Posted by Matthew Weier O'Phinney on 04/08/05 21:44

* Michael <michael.acs@m5central.net>:
> I am currently developing a few security functions for my website and
> have finally decided to use the session functions that I have been
> avoiding for years since I did not want to change from what I am used to
> developing. So now that I have refreshed my brain on how to use
> sessions I have to make a decision, Where should I store my session
> data, in the session file or on my mysql database, Speed is my main
> drive here and I believe the file might be just a few microseconds
> faster, but what do you suggest I use?

Files are faster, but you really only need to worry about those
microseconds on high traffic sites or if your PHP is doing heavy
lifting. Some things to think about:

* Are you on a web cluster? If so, you'll want centralized session
storage. Your options are a database or a distributed file system
(NFS or openGFS, for instance)
* Are you using a shared host? If so, it's possible for session
collision and snooping to happen when using file based sessions.
Database storage might be a good idea in this situation.

--
Matthew Weier O'Phinney | WEBSITES:
Webmaster and IT Specialist | http://www.garden.org
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802-863-5251 x156 | http://nationalgardenmonth.org
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