Posted by ECRIA Public Mail Buffer on 03/23/06 03:57

Rather than have a lot of lengthy SQL queries, we have always opted to do a
good portion of the data processing/filtering for high-traffic sites in PHP,
and when necessary have optimized the application server for speed. You
should check out the Zend Optimizer and/or Zend Caneveral. These
optimizations will cache php scripts in the server's memory (along with
common database queries) to improve speed and reduce load on the db &
interpretive engines. Then, after all is said and done, you can always use a
stateful load balancer (such as the Cisco local director) to distribute
requests to duplicate servers while maintaining session information for each
user.

In some cases, one may run into a data storage problem before running into a
script/query speed problem, even without application server optimization.
This can be taken care of using a storage area network.

Until then, if you want to squeeze the most out of one box, bear these in
mind:
PHP - Split your files up and only run the code that you need for the action
being carried out
PHP - Limit your use of abstracted methods - make sure they are efficient,
and if not write your own.
PHP - You can often write little scripts to loop over subroutines that
contain code you suspect to be sluggish, and determine exactly what the
overhead is. Some built-in PHP methods are faster than combinations of
others that achieve the same thing, especially in specific contexts and
especially for string parsing tasks.
MySQL - Indexes. Learn & use them. Keep them as small as possible.

Good luck & happy programming,

ECRIA Dev Team
http://www.ecria.com

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