Posted by NC on 12/20/05 04:27

Susan Baker wrote:
>
> does any one know (when using PHP in "server side scripting")
> if scripts are launched as seperate processes or if they are
> spawned as threads in a thread pool of a master process?

Depends... PHP can be configured to run as a CGI executable (in which
case, if I remember correctly, each instance will be a separate
process) or as a module of an HTTP server, in which case PHP will
follow the threading model of the HTTP server. So if you run PHP as an
Apache (Apache 1.*, that is) module, each instance of Apache will start
as a separate process; if you run PHP as an ISAPI module under IIS, PHP
will run in threads...

> (pref the latter since it is less "expensive" in computer resource
> terms)

This may be, but it also means that a malfunction in one thread brings
down the entire process, including all other threads it has spawned...

Cheers,
NC

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